The Ant and the Grasshopper

by Jehan Georges Vibert (1875)

This terrific painting by the French artist Jehan Georges Vibert is based on Aesop’s fable The Ant and the Grasshopper.

The fable tells the story of a hungry grasshopper who approaches a colony of ants. He asks them for some food, but they say: “While we prepared for winter, all you did was play. So go play!”.

Then they turn their backs on him.

The fable teaches the importance of hard work and the necessity of preparing for the future. But to be honest it’s pretty cruel. We feel bad for the poor grasshopper.

In the 1800s the grasshopper became a potent symbol for the starving artist, who faces indifference and even hatred from the general public. The artist came to be seen as a wastrel, and ‘un-productive’. This meant that the romantic movement saw in the grasshopper a hero of sorts, not unlike Kafka’s famous Ungeziefer in The Metamorphosis.

In the painting above, Vibert takes the allegory literally, but turns the message on its head. Instead of ants and a grasshopper, we see a shivering lute-player and a bundled up friar carrying plenty of food. The friar appears to be lecturing the artist instead of helping him.

And so the painting becomes a kind of accusation. It says, “how can this man claim to be a virtuous Christian, when he won’t even share some food and warmth with his fellow man?” As Goethe once wrote, “we can judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him”.

I like this painting because it suggests that the role of the artist is often misunderstood. Bourgeois values suggest that artists have to learn to sell their work on the marketplace instead of making Art for art’s sake. And like the ants, some people can be very disinclined to see the value in supporting the arts.

It’s a painting that makes the case for the enduring importance of the Arts, but also points a finger at those who preach from up high. It’s a timeless allegorical image.

Julian

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