The Ant and the Grasshopper

Jehan Georges Vibert · 1875

Medium

Watercolor, with touches of gouache, on cream wove card

Original size

31.6 × 41.5 cm (12 1/2 × 16 3/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

Vibert's take on La Fontaine's beloved fable is rendered with the kind of theatrical wit and jewel-like precision that made him one of the most celebrated French genre painters of the Second Empire era. Jehan Georges Vibert trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under Félix-Joseph Barrias and made his name painting elaborately staged satirical scenes — often skewering the Catholic clergy with gleeful irreverence. In this watercolor he brought that same eye for narrative detail to Aesop's cautionary tale, using gouache highlights to punctuate the cream-toned card with touches of luminous colour that reward close looking. The restraint of the medium only sharpens the storytelling. Vibert was also a serious theorist of paint and technique, authoring the treatise *La Science de la peinture*, which remained a practical reference for working artists long after his death. Because the original is a watercolor, translating it into oil inevitably means a reinterpretation rather than a strict copy — and that is a strength. Our artists work from high-resolution archival imagery of the Art Institute of Chicago's piece, capturing Vibert's compositional elegance and palette while giving the image the warmth and tactile depth that oil on canvas uniquely provides.