'The Rat-Catcher's Daughter', Laurence Housman

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Artwork details

Artist

Laurence Housman (1861‑1959)

Title

The Rat-Catcher's Daughter

Date c.1904

MediumInk on paper

Dimensionssupport: 152 x 92 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Purchased 1924

Reference

N03877

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Catalogue entry

N03877 THE RAT-CATCHER'S DAUGHTER c. 1904

Inscr. ‘LH’ b.l.
Pen and ink on brown paper, 6×3 5/8 (15×9).
Purchased from the artist (Duveen Drawings Fund) 1924.

An illustration for a book of fairy-tales by Laurence Housman, The Blue Moon, John Murray, 1904, facing p.175; reprinted in A Doorway to Fairyland, 1922, p.101. The story tells how a money-grabbing rat-catcher caught a gnome in his trap. The gnome promised, as the price of release, to make him the richest man on earth, and that his daughter should marry the king's son. The gnome then took Jacome, the beautiful daughter, underground for three years and turned her into pure gold; eventually she did marry the king's son, but the rat-catcher lost his wealth… (read more)