Art, literature & historyFeeding Mule - Front, from Die Zweite Thierfolge
1800
- Dating
- Exact year
- Held at
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Medium
- Etching in black on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- Plate: 14.6 × 10.8 cm (5 3/4 × 4 5/16 in.); Sheet: 17.4 × 13.2 cm (6 7/8 × 5 1/4 in.)
- Collection no.
- 2013.439
- Attribution
- By the artist
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
About this artwork
Feeding Mule - Front, from Die Zweite Thierfolge — Johann Christian Reinhart. 1800.
Medium: Etching in black on ivory laid paper. Dimensions: Plate: 14.6 × 10.8 cm (5 3/4 × 4 5/16 in.); Sheet: 17.4 × 13.2 cm (6 7/8 × 5 1/4 in.).
Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.
One of Reinhart’s rare departures from a lifelong focus on landscapes, this realistic pair of etchings (2013.439–440) depicts two views of a single mule standing in the Italian countryside. The mule’s dual positioning possibly alludes to Renaissance-era studies of the female nude. Thus the mule becomes not just a prop in a landscape, but the artwork’s protagonist, a carefully studied figure atop a familiarly bucolic ground.
Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.
Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.
Location checked Sep 10, 2026. This does not indicate whether the work is on display.