"The Wondrous Union of Brute Face with Human Expression"

Tantalizing post about Hermann Ploucquet on Ravishing Beasts:

Truly, Ploucquet had delighted English audiences with his novel creations: “nothing can be more genuine than the admiration, or more hearty than the laughter, with which the civilised animals are greeted. Ploucquet’s most popular were a series of six tableaux illustrating the German fable Reinecke the Fox based on Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s etchings of Goethe’s version of the medieval trickster tale. Reminiscing several decades after the Exhibition, J. A. Froude noted that the appeal of Ploucquet’s vision of Reineke was sufficient to incite a craze for the neglected fable: "Everybody began to talk of Reineke."

Link.