Signed, this oil on panel by Philippe Rousseau (1816–1887) illustrates The Fox and the Stork, an extract from Jean de la Fontaine's Fables, Book 1, Fable 18:

'But now the dame, to torture him, Such wit was in her, Served up her dinner
In vases made so tall and slim, They let their owner's beak pass in and out,
But not, by any means, the fox's snout! All arts without avail,
With drooping head and tail, As ought a fox a fowl had cheated,
The hungry guest at last retreated, You knaves, for you is this recital,
You'll often meet Dame Stork's requital.'

The Fox and the Stork is the third vulpine 'fable' painting by Philippe Rousseau, an artist who, through his still lifes and genre scenes, secured a name for himself in nineteenth-century French painting. Although he has often been overshadowed by his namesakes – the Barbizon artist Théodore, and the 'naïve' painter Henri 'le Douanier' – his success is inseparable from the movement now called by art historians the 'Chardin Revival'. The French Revolution swept away the ancien régime so thoroughly that it was almost subversive to admire the great French artists of the eighteenth century, Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) included. Nonetheless, critics such as Théodore Thoré, the champion of Vermeer and realism, successfully campaigned against the oblivion of Chardin, and by 1852 the Louvre had acquired three examples.

Rousseau based many of his paintings and watercolours on the Fables of Jean de la Fontaine (1621–1695). Since the first six books appeared in 1668, the Fables were a great success both in France and abroad.

Collectors of French animalier painting, the Chardin Revival, and La Fontaine-illustrated fine art will find this a charming and literarily rich example of Rousseau's fable series, connecting nineteenth-century French still-life painting to one of the great texts of French classical literature.