From the exhibition
Nederlandse leeuw pakt de Franse haan (Dutch Lion Seizes the French Rooster)
· 1793

This hand-colored etching depicts the Dutch Lion mauling the French Rooster—a nationalist satire from the turbulent 1790s when the French Revolution threatened European monarchies. The lower text, in Dutch, celebrates Dutch resistance against French revolutionary expansion. The print employs heraldic animal symbolism common to political caricature since Hogarth's era: the Netherlands and France represented by their national emblems locked in violent struggle, with a severed limb and naval elements suggesting military conflict. Hand-colored etchings like this were mass-produced for popular circulation, establishing visual conventions later adopted by Gillray, Rowlandson, and 19th-century cartoonists. The work reflects both the print satire tradition's role in political discourse and the era's crude nationalist and militaristic messaging.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/