Monkeys Boxing, from Monkey-ana
April 1828
Medium
Etching in black on paper
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
79444
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This pugilistic print comes from Monkeyana, the satirical masterpiece by Thomas Landseer, the printmaker brother of the famed animal portraitist Edwin Landseer. Each of the 25 etchings in the series features misbehaving monkeys dressed in human clothes—whether impersonating Cupid or stomping on a copy of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. These prize fighters have drawn a raucous crowd, and the incongruous theatricality of the print is only increased by the inclusion of a line from Macbeth, William S...
About the Artist
Thomas Landseer · 1795–1880
**Thomas Landseer** (1795–1880) was a British engraver and etcher renowned for his masterful reproductions of his younger brother Edwin Landseer’s animal paintings, which helped popularize the latter’s work across Victorian Britain. Born in London as the eldest of fourteen children to engraver John Landseer and actress Jane Potts, Thomas was one of only seven siblings to reach adulthood; his broth...