A Goose and a Gander with their Goslings Honking in Alarm as Two Foxes with their Cubs Emerge from the Rushes

A Goose and a Gander with their Goslings Honking in Alarm as Two Foxes with their Cubs Emerge from the Rushes

Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Impending violence contrasts with a lushly serene natural setting in this highly finished drawing of foxes threatening a family of geese. The image derives either from "Gänsegeschichten" (The Legend of the Geese), a fable the artist wrote around 1803, or from Goethe's more famous "Reineke Fuchs." Intended as a satirical commentary upon human folly, the work demonstrates how the close literary friendship established between Tischbein and Goethe in Italy continued after both had returned to Germany.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Goose and a Gander with their Goslings Honking in Alarm as Two Foxes with their Cubs Emerge from the RushesA Goose and a Gander with their Goslings Honking in Alarm as Two Foxes with their Cubs Emerge from the RushesA Goose and a Gander with their Goslings Honking in Alarm as Two Foxes with their Cubs Emerge from the RushesA Goose and a Gander with their Goslings Honking in Alarm as Two Foxes with their Cubs Emerge from the RushesA Goose and a Gander with their Goslings Honking in Alarm as Two Foxes with their Cubs Emerge from the Rushes

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.