Cats in art

[the button]

Depends on when you start to chart the human/feline domestic relationship? And where?

The internet tells me that a grave was found in Cyprus in 2004, containing human & cat remains which dated back 9,500 years.

 

[sleaterkinney]

 

[Stanley Edwards]

The internet tells me that a grave was found in Cyprus in 2004, containing human & cat remains which dated back 9,500 years.

Perhaps the cat just smelled a free lunch and got locked in?

I would guess that man has been befriending animals as long as hunting. At the very least farming livestock. From what I know, livestock were very often kept in-house thousands of years ago. Maybe during a good year when plenty of roasting kittens survived and supply out-stripped demand some cats became pets. Good mother roasting cats possibly gained affection from there owners. Bought wealth even and so were buried with the owner when they died.

There must be paintings on the web somewhere that back-up this theory.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I always understood that they ate the mice that ate the grain and hence were worshipped by the Ancient Egyptians, but that doesn't explain how they came to be hanging around in the first place.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Which one?

How many of my ex's do you know?

 

[Harold Shand]

I think between us we're onto something in our explanations. The initial lack of symbolizing in the Gothic world that I was talking about- a real handicap because they certainly liked to interpret things symbolically. And artists used copy books as the source of a lot of their animal figures. If cats weren't in there then that wouldn't have helped either.

Later on we get the Familiar stuff which others here know more about than me. But that sounds plausible too. Hogarth is happy to use that in The Graham Children but in other respects it must have been a hinderance.

We seem to be dealing with a pretty narrow range of artists here, certainly in finished pictures, though less so in sketches. It's hard to understand what stopped Leonardo, Delacroix and Gericault taking their sketches into finished compositions. Renoir and Balthus both seem to connect their cats with female sexuality. Delacroix and Gericault like the mini-tiger aspect of cats, typically Romantic, one might say.

As for painting a cat simply because it is loved, then we're not left with a lot.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

I always understood that they ate the mice that ate the grain and hence were worshipped by the Ancient Egyptians, but that doesn't explain how they came to be hanging around in the first place.

"50 million years ago, a small, "weasel-like" animal called "Miacis" roamed the Earth..........." and evolved into cats, dogs etc...

The most common theory is that the Egyptians first domesticated cats. However, there is loads we don't know for sure about art and history an estimated 40,000 years prior to that. Plenty of theories state that cats were 'domesticated' on ships to protect the stores of food and there are plenty of very believable theories that trade routes existed long before the theories that state the Ancient Egyptians and South American Incas actually traded together.

This is all very interesting and ties in nicely with stuff I'm currently reading about prehistoric trade routes.

e2a;

However, the new results show the house cat lineage is far older. Ancestors of domestic cats are now thought to have broken away from their wild relatives and started living with humans as early as 130,000 years ago.

From a BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6251434.stm

Which is interesting because new evidence suggests that the earliest art in the world may be 130,000 years old also.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

John Sloan, Backyards, Greenwich Village.

from the Whitney Museum of Art but currently on loan to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, where I saw it on Friday.

 

[Harold Shand]

Talking of weasel like animals, I want to go to Krakow and see this:

http://www.krakow-info.com/images/dama2.jpg

It's an ermine, but it reminds me of the way Leonardo draws cats on that sketchsheet I can't get to post up here. Wonderfully supple. But not quite the way I look at cats, it has to be said, more scientific than love-based.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Also see

but let's stick to the cats, eh?

 

[Harold Shand]

Laugh Out Loud

Actually, why don't I just link to those Leonardo drawings?
http://digilander.libero.it/Roccogatto/leonardo_cats.jpg

And while we're about it, Gainsborough:
http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/personen/fleischmann/d_archsuse05/206_gainsb_cat.jpg

I can't find the Delacroix.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Franz Marc - Cat on a yellow pillow

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Goya - Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zunica

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Daniel Kessler:

Cat With Purple Ball

Green Cat With Ball

White Cat

 

[Donna Ferentes]

White Cat II

White Cat With Ball

Spotted Cat

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Hiroshige, Asakusa ricefields and the Torinomachi Festival

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Jan van Kessel

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._life.jpg/775px-Jan_van_Kessel_still_life.jpg

http://www.artistas-americanos.com/chilelindo/images/Jan van Kessel III.jpg

 

[moose]

a curiously human-looking Chagall cat

 

[moose]

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Los gatos de David Vela

 

[moose]

Karel Appel. One of many...

 

[Orang Utan]

 

[oryx]

Saw this yesterday, for sale in a west end gallery off Pall Mall. I didn't look at the price. It's Les Deux Chats by Suzanne Valadon. I think she has caught that slightly malevolent and bloody-minded glare that cats often do.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I bought a card yesterday with a series of drawings by the Swiss Art Nouveau artist Steinlen....I knew his posters (the most famous being Le Chat Noir)

but this was a series of drawing from a book called Le Méchant Dada (the naughty horsey). It features a toddler's encounter with a cat and is beautifully drawn. Great observation of the ways cats and toddlers move....I couldn't find the image online, but here's another...

 

[oryx]

Great observation of the ways cats and toddlers move....

Isn't it? I love the way he's done the cat cautiously approaching the frog then batting it with its paw. Reminds me of my own little minx, who looks quite similar.

 

[Paul Russell]

Can anyone identify this painting:

A woman side on with shortish dark hair, pale skin, dark jumper/top. There's a big fattish or hairy white cat on her shoulder looking straight at the viewer.

Saw it on a greeting card in a shop window -- curious to know who painted it.

I have a photo of it someone where on my hard drive...

 

[Mrs Magpie]

What period/style?

 

[Paul Russell]

What period/style?

Hold on, I found my photo of it

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Ah, thanks. At first I wondered whether it could be the portrait by Gustave Courbet, but clearly not. Paul Brason can paint a good cat within a portrait, but I have no idea who painted that picture I'm afraid.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

lucien freud-girl with kitten