{"id":3077,"title":"The Cat's Paw","medium":"Oil on panel","classification":"Paintings","dimension":"30 x 27 1/8 in. (76.2 x 68.9 cm) (sight)\r\n37 7/8 x 35 1/8 x 2 1/4 in. (96.2 x 89.22 x 5.72 cm) (outer frame)","object_name":"Painting","continent":"Europe","country":"England","nationality":"British","dated":"c. 1824","room":"G305","role":"Artist","text":"In Jean de La Fontaine's seventeenth-century fable, which this painting illustrates, a cunning monkey persuades a cat to retrieve roasting chestnuts from a fire. The term cat's paw, meaning a person unwittingly duped by another, derives from this tale.\r\nNumerous engraved and painted precedents for the brutality of Landseer's interpretation existed in the work of seventeenth-century Dutch and British illustrators of La Fontaine. The fabulist's symbolic use of animals to describe the tribulations of human existence became popular among nineteenth-century romantic painters and satirists.","creditline":"Gift of Dr. Roger L. Anderson in memory of Agnes Lynch Anderson","accession_number":"82.47","artist":"Sir Edwin Henry Landseer","life_date":"British, 1802–1873","department":"European Art","rights_type":"Public Domain","image_width":5029,"image_height":5575,"recent":0,"see_also":[],"sort_number":"82    47","image":"valid","public_access":1,"curator_approved":0,"highlights":0,"Cache_Location":"003000\\000\\70\\3077","Primary_RenditionNumber":"mia_5004733.jpg","Rights_Image_Display":"Full","related:audio-stops":[{"title":"Landseer, The Cat's Paw","_id":"3077","objectId":"3077","link":"http://audio-tours.s3.amazonaws.com/p269.mp3","number":"269","type":"audio"}],"mtime":"2026-02-04T06:00:50.797Z"}