Hedgehog Art Through The Ages, Part One

Since Her Highness, Princess Penelope Pricklepants, has taken an interest in education, we’ve found a number of pieces of Hedgehog Art through the ages to share to aid the much neglected field of Hedgehog art education. In this article we will share with you the magnificent story of hedgehog art, a story well worth telling.

We begin with this less well known Botticelli work, Birth of a Hedgehog. A beautiful and sublime work of art, and a true milestone in Renaissance Hedgehog art:

Next we have another Renaissance hedgehog art history milestone by Michelangelo. Sadly, the Vatican rejected Michelangelo’s first hedgehog-based design for the Sistine Chapel:

Grant Wood’s American Hegehog Gothic is less well known than his more popular painting, but this remarkable piece is truly iconic in hedgehog art and culture:

Leutze’s Hedgehog Crossing the Delaware is a high point of 1850s art — stirring imagery, truly remarkable artistic composition:

When Hedgehog With a Pearl Earring went to auction in 1947, it was widely considered by experts as a forgery of Vermeer done by the notorious Van Meegeren. Thanks to painstaking research by Princess Pricklepants, the provenance of this piece has been authoritatively traced back to Vermeer, and it’s now a favorite piece in Her Highness’ collection. A true Dutch master-work:

Magritte’s Le Fils de l’Herrison is difficult to explain, but here it is:

Edward Hopper’s Nighthogs was recently discovered in museum archives of the Art Institute of Chicago among works willed by Hopper to the museum that were lost in storage vaults. It’s very exciting to see this remarkable discovery come to light.

Norman Rockwell’s love of hedgehogs is not well known. He made this painting as a cover for the Saturday Evening Post in 1958. At the time, featuring an African on the cover in the diner was a brave move by Mr. Rockwell, but unfortunately the theme was too controversial and was ultimately not accepted until it was reworked.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of various high points of hedgehog art and hope you may have learned something as well. There are many other works that we’ve shared on Facebook and Twitter, feel free to follow us there, or continue on with us here to find the soon to be published, and creatively titled, More Hedgehog Art, Part Two.