Le Chat Noir (The Black Cat) Etching in black ink on off-white paper, c.1860-61; 10¼ x 14¼ inches (26.1 x 36.2 cm). Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. CAI.180, Constantine Ionides bequest.
This etching portrays six men who recoil in horror when a wall is knocked down in a cellar revealing the severed head of a young woman with a black cat standing on it. In Poe’s story an abusive and drunken husband, after previously murdering his black cat Pluto, tried to murder the black cat that replaced him. When his wife tried to intervene he killed her with an axe. When the police investigate her disappearance they hear mewing mysteriously coming from the cellar. They knock down a wall and discover the wife’s corpse. Her husband had accidentally shut up the cat behind the wall when he had bricked up his wife’s body. Legros has chosen to portray the climax of the story showing the abhorrence of the spectators to the crime. — Dennis T. Lanigan
Last modified 23 November 2022