File:SB-04-165-source-1.png

Summary

Description

The Fox and the Crow. A crow sings among musical notes on a tree branch, while a fox sits at lower right with crossed forelegs. The tree, branches, crow, notes, fox, printed title, frame and hatching match the full scrapbook illustration on page 165. The museum photograph shows a printed cutting mounted in an album, not a preparatory drawing. Its light pencil mark and natural paper are retained; the outer mounting-paper outline is excluded while the complete printed picture frame is retained. The upper fragment of this same composition also occurs on scrapbook page 218, item 5; that full album page has now been directly compared. The scrapbook keeps the crow, tree and musical notes, while this external source shows the complete composition including the fox.

A printed cutting catalogued by Cooper Hewitt as 1878, illustrated by Frederick Stuart Church. The same composition is confirmed in G. Washington Æsop's Fables (New York: The World, 35 Park Row, 1878), printed p.37. The book title is dated 1878 and its copyright notice 1877. The catalogue status is Research in Progress; the catalogue date does not establish the first publication. The engraver is not securely identified here.

Compared directly with H. P. Blavatsky's Scrapbooks, volume 4, page 165, item 2. The scrapbook image, handwriting, notes and transcription remain a separate witness. This matching composition does not establish the first publication or identify the physical copy used for the scrapbook cutting.

Source

Natural-colour scan supplied by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, accession 1938-57-1070-197, media identifier CHSDM-57283_01-000001. Credit line: Bequest of Erskine Hewitt. Medium in the official record: Printed in black ink on paper.

• Museum object record.
• Persistent object identifier.
• Persistent identifier of this exact media view.
• Complete high-resolution museum photograph used for this crop.
• Matching Fables, 1878, printed p.37.

Thank you to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for preserving this material and freely providing its original photographs and Open Access metadata.

File and processing

PNG, 1386 × 2206 pixels, RGB. Original museum JPEG: 4529 × 5432 pixels, 13189513 bytes, SHA-256 e313fa9d12ddab7a26541768d74907a838b93b47e2a10b4cd23d85d914b92015.

The source is the complete museum photograph; only the printed illustration is cropped. The outer mounting-paper outline is excluded, and the entire inner printed frame is retained. Illustration crop (1200, 1340)–(2630, 3590). One bicubic alignment correction of 0.052159 degrees clockwise, measured from the long printed picture-frame bottom rule. Final trim (22, 22)–(1408, 2228); right and bottom bounds are exclusive. No added canvas is included. The complete relevant composition, printed frame where present, title and caption are retained. Original paper colour, source marks, show-through and scan artefacts remain. No enlargement, colour or tonal correction, sharpening, retouching or reconstruction was applied. PNG compression is lossless. The complete source is linked above.

Rights

The saved official Smithsonian Open Access record, captured on 29 October 2026, specifies CC0 for this exact media view and its metadata. The underlying nineteenth-century printed illustration is public-domain historical material. The attribution, accession and credit line are retained above.