The Queen of the Fishes: Plate 5 (1894): Art, History and Details

The Queen of the Fishes: Plate 5 (1894) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lucien Pissarro (British, 1863–1944).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Pissarro, son of the French Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro, moved to England in 1890. By 1894 he and his wife, Esther Bensusan Pissarro, had bought a printing press and established the Eragny Press. Influenced by William Morris, they were involved in every step of the production process: designing, cutting the woodblocks, setting type, and printing. The first book published by Ergany Press, The Queen of the Fishes, is based on an old fairy tale in which a peasant boy and girl escape the hardships of their lives by fantasizing that they have been turned into a giant oak and a splendid fish, respectively.

Object facts

• Title: The Queen of the Fishes: Plate 5
• Date: 1894
• Creator attribution: Lucien Pissarro (British, 1863–1944)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Bound Volume
• Technique: woodcut printed in gray
• Dimensions: Book page: 19.2 x 13.3 cm (7 9/16 x 5 1/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1970.50.e

Collection credit

Gift of Henry H. Hawley for the fiftieth anniversary of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• Montañés-lleras, Susana. “Of Technology and Fantasy: fairy tales, fables, and the transformation of illustration in the long 19th century.” Gramarye : The Journal of the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy 28 (Winter 2025): 51-65.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.