Dreaming of Greatness

The picture of the week for this last full week of March is from the talented illustrator Oliver Herford (1863 – 1935).

Herford was responsible for all of the wonderful illustrations in the book The Kitten’s Garden of Verses published in 1911.

All of the pictures in this group look like pencil drawings and suffer in no way from a lack of colorization. Whether the scan or the original book had the peachy/pink-colored paper, the subtle color of the background adds a richness that a true white background would have lacked.

I love all of the pictures in this book and have been publishing about one a month to Reusable Art. Sort of doling them out one at a time like one would with prized candies rather than post them all in one shot and risk them not being enjoyed fully. This month, the next picture in the sequence is this illustration of a wee kitten gazing upward at a stone lion which speaks to me as both a charming cat drawing as well as a metaphor. The fuzzy kitten stands on its tip-toes and touches the great lion with her front paws as if to make a silent connection to the stately statue.

I can only assume the illustration originally had a name but I refer to it as “Dreaming of Greatness”. Whether one is a teeny kitten or a large man, we all dream of being something we are not. Ambition, when harnessed, can lead to true greatness.

To download the full-sized (490px X 500px) image, please visit cat and lion drawing.

To view the rest of these charming Herford illustrations, please visit the Pencil Drawn Cats category on ReusableArt.com.