Puss in Boots by various authors

Puss in Boots has inspired many artists and I decided to collect some of most beautiful and influential works which all enter Public Domain on author’s life + 70 years. What this means?
You can use any of this illustrations for whatever you want and wherever you want (beware, maybe you live in a country with more strict copyright rules) and you don’t need to give any credit to anybody. But if you use it on your blog or something similar on-line, a link to this page or blog would be nice.

Text in this post is written by me and it is copyrighted. You can’t use any part of this text without my explicit permission. (But if you contact me, you have good chance to get it.)

O.k., let’s go to The Puss in Boots, also known as The Master Cat.

This is the reproduction of oil portrait of Charles Perrault by unknown French painter, available through de.wikipedia.org:

Charles Perrault’s portrait

And this is the portrait of the man who inspired him with his story about Gagliuso from Pentamerone, Giovanni Battista Basile, more known as Giambattista Basile:

Giambattista Basile, author of Pentamerone, The Story of the Stories

We will start with illustration by DJ Munro after drawing of August Dore:

Marquis is drowning

We can see a full story in set of illustrations designed by Otto Speckter (1807-1871) and drawn by Louis Haghe (1806-1885), sometimes signed as Lewis Haghe.

The story was titled Puss in Boots and Marquis of Carabas and it was published by Scottish publisher John Murray in 1844:

Here is a collaboration of Frederic Theodore Lix (1830-1897) and Gustave Staal (1817-1882). The first made full color plates and the second vignettes in black and white:

Cat and peasants

Cat will take the responsibility

Everything must be ready!

Happy ending

There is also older version of the same tale coming from Norway. It is called Lord Peter and in this story cat is actually enchanted princess. I found some illustrations made by Erik Theodor Werenskiold (1855-1938) with a help of Theodor Severin Kittelsen (1857–1914) and Otto Ludvig Sinding (1842–1909)

Youngest boy inherited only a cat

The cat is really an enchanted princess

Everything will be ready for magic transformation

And we should not forget Harry Clarke:

Right boots can get you into any party

We really can’t do without Charles Robinson:

Cat with reapers

There is pretty interesting version of George Cruikshank, who rewrote a fairy tale to apologize inappropriate behavior of the cat with royal origin of his master. The story can be understood without any words (but I like words, so I will use one for each illustration):

Spare!

Deceive!

Flatter!

Plan!

Bluff!

Lie!

Danger!

Danger!

Win!

Welcome!

Party!

End!

One of less known books with well-known illustrator is Pretty Goldilocks and other stories from fairy books published by Longman, Green and Co. in 1910. The artist is Henry Justice Ford (1860-1941), favorite illustrator of Andrew Lang. In this particular collection the story is titled The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots:

Yes, we have more. Next is Richard Heighway (1832-191?) whose line drawings could serve as coloring pages too. No need for additional words, right?:

Actually in these times many black and white books were available in colors too. But they were hand colored and much more expensive. Cool, huh?

I will continue with some work of Walter Crane. He incorporated text into pictures and i cut it out. i am afraid it doesn’t look as good as it could:

Bad news

Planning

False identity

New identity for master

Princess likes him

Tricks are working

Party time

O.k., next set is really beautiful. This time only two illustrations, both work of Carl Offterdinger.

Boots can make you a man

Pretending is the key to success

These are my favorites, but have to add these beautiful black and white pieces by Dore for the end:

Ladies and gentlemen: Master cat!

Be careful, there will be changes!

Yes, I used a lot of exclamation marks. Sorry.

Over and out!