Revered and Reviled

by L A Vocelle

  Figure 8.11. A Young Girl with Cat, Berthe Morisot, 1886, Private Collection

  An avid cat painter, the Dutch artist Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (1821-1901) was born in Amsterdam into a family of painters. Quite precocious, she sold her first painting at age 15. Highly decorated with many medals and honors, and having painted for quite a few of the royalty in Europe, Ronner-Knip is well known for her paintings of domestic pets, primarily cats. Paintings of pets were popular with the wealthy bourgeois in the Victorian era, and her many paintings of cats getting into mischief in domestic scenes proved to be favorites. Mostly sentimental portrayals, her paintings rarely offer any metaphorical meanings, and are focused only on the cats themselves. She studied her cat subjects with avidity and sincerity, even going so far as to construct a specially built glass-fronted studio wherein her cats could freely scamper about, sleep, and get into the type of trouble that only cats can while the prolific Ronner-Knip sketched and painted them (figure 8.12).

  Figure 8.12. Playing with Paints, Henriëtte Ronner- Knip, c. 1890, Private Collection

  Probably best known today for his posters, the Swiss artist Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923) loved cats. As a young boy, Steinlen drew cats in the margins of his books and grew up to live in a house he named “Cat’s Cottage”. While living in Paris, his house on the Rue Caulaincourt became a well-known gathering place for all the cats in the quartier. Steinlen’s depictions of cats consist of simple lines. Unlike the cute Victorian kittens of Ronner-Knip, Steinlen’s cats exude a certain feline regality. Ronner-Knip’s cats are children’s pets, whereas Steinlen’s are independent and too proud to be depicted tipping over a lamp or teapot. Their quiet beauty is also profoundly portrayed in the many sculptures that Steinlen produced (figure 8.13).

  Figure 8.13. Two Cats, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen , La Bodinière, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

  The English artist Louis Wain’s (1860-1939) depictions of cats during the Victorian era caused their popularity to rise to a height not known since they were first worshipped as the goddess Bast. Wain was the only boy in a household of five sisters, where he remained until the age of 23 when he married his sisters’ governess, Emily Richardson. Sadly, only three years after their marriage, Emily died of breast cancer. Wain’s lifelong devotion to cats perhaps started because of Peter, a black and white kitten, whom the couple had taken in as a stray. Peter comforted Emily throughout her illness, and Wain taught the cat various tricks to cheer his wife. He began to draw Peter, and Emily encouraged him to try and have the pictures published. Later Wain was to write, “To him, properly, belongs the foundation of my career, the developments of my initial efforts, and the establishing of my work.” Over the next 30 years, Wain would produce hundreds of drawings a year, illustrate about a hundred children’s books, publish in magazines and journals and even find time to be the President and Chairman of the newly founded National Cat Club. He also avidly supported several animal charities such as the Governing Council of Our Dumb Friends League, the Society for the Protection of Cats and the Antivivisection Society. Wain was quoted as saying, “I have found as a result of many years of inquiry and study, that people who keep cats and are in the habit of petting them, do not suffer from those petty ailments which all flesh is heir to. Rheumatism and nervous complaints are uncommon with them, and pussy’s lovers are of the sweetest temperament. I have often felt the benefit after a long spell of mental effort, of having my cats sitting around my shoulders or half an hour’s chat with Peter” (Van Vechten, 1921, p. 116).

  Unfortunately, Wain had no head for business and endured financial hardships throughout his lifetime. From the early 1900’s, Wain’s mental health began to deteriorate. Most have thought that he had schizophrenia, but some today believe he might have had Asperger’s Syndrome. Throughout the last years of his life his depictions of cats became more and more surreal, kaleidoscopic (figure 8.14). He was eventually committed to a pauper’s mental asylum in 1924. After outcries from H.G. Wells and the Prime Minister, he was moved to a proper hospital where he lived out the remaining years of his life until 1939. H.G. Wells said of him, “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

  Harry Pointer (1822-1889) was an English photographer who became successful photographing his Brighton Cats series. After spending almost twenty years as a soldier in the Life Guards, the Oxfordshire born Pointer arrived in Brighton in 1858 and began working as a military drill instructor. However, in 1866 he established himself as a professional photographer and opened his studio in Bloomsbury Place. Pointer found his niche in photographing cats and kittens in anthropomorphic poses such as having tea and roller-skating or even demanding dinner. Pointer took and published around 200 pictures of cats.

  Figure 8.14. Untitled, Called ‘Early Irish Indian Cat’, Louis Wain, c. 1924-1939

  The American Harry Whittier Frees (1879-1953) followed in the wake of Pointer and began a career in cat photography in 1906. He made a successful living producing postcards, calendars and children’s books often photographing dead animals that had been rather gruesomely stuffed. Frees wrote in his book Animal Land on the Air,

  “Rabbits are the easiest to photograph in costume, but incapable to taking many "human" parts. Puppies are tractable when rightly understood, but the kitten is the most versatile animal actor, and possesses the greatest variety of appeal. The pig is the most difficult to deal with, but effective on occasion. The best period of young animal models is a short one, being when they are from six to ten weeks of age. An interesting fact is that a kitten's attention is best held through the sense of sight, while that of a puppy is most influenced by sound, and equally readily distracted by it. The native reasoning powers of young animals are, moreover, quite as pronounced as those of the human species, and relatively far sure” (Frees, 1929) (figure 8.15).

  Figure 8.15. The Little Folks of Animal Land, 1915, Harry W. Frees

  The great French artists Renoir, Rousseau, Manet, Gauguin, and Cassatt are only a few of the hundreds of 19th century artists that included the cat in their paintings. In Renoir’s Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children, (1878) (figure 8.16) the cat is barely visible on her lap. A very close and careful look at this painting reveals deeper images and meanings. There is a monstrous face on the curtain and skulls in Madame’s dress. A cat sits on her lap looking up at her barely visible, disguised, an allusion to the fact that women and cats were still tied together through their association with sexuality and magic. Even though Marcel Proust once commented on the painting as representing the epitome of the bourgeois home, he obviously did not see the secondary images and did not realize that Renoir’s message was ambiguous.

  Henri Rousseau believed, as many cat lovers do today, that a person’s character could be judged upon their attitude toward cats. Rousseau reveals this in a conversation with Boswell, who by the way, did not like cats.

  “Rousseau : Do you like cats? Boswell : No. Rousseau : I was sure of that. It is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like cats because the cat is free and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do. Boswell : Nor a hen, either. Rousseau : A hen would obey your orders if you could make her understand them. But a cat will understand you perfectly and not obey them” (Lunn, 1953, p. 9).

  Figure 8.16. Mme George Charpentier and her Children, 1878, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  Rousseau was self-taught and much of his life was spent as a customs officer, hence the nickname Le Douanier. Having only started painting at age 49, he was greatly ridiculed by most artists of the time. However, Picasso and some surrealists noticed his talent and genius. His paintings are of the primitive style and usually have a person standing in the forefront of a landscape as in the Portrait de Mme M. Rousseau. Rousseau also painted a portrait of the wri
ter and naval officer Pierre Loti, who just happened to be a cat lover as well (figure 8.17). Loti even wrote a short story called The Lives of Two Cats. From The Argus, a Melbourne paper dated 1923, we have this article:

  PIERRE LOTI’S CATS.

  Pierre Loti, whose death recently is so deeply deplored, adored cats, the New York “World” tells us. For many years he was president of a society of cat-lovers known as “La Patte de Velours” (“The Velvet Paw”). In the story he wrote “for my son Samuel when he has learned to read,” Loti describes how he once saw the soul of a cat reveal itself suddenly for a moment “sad as a human soul and searching for my soul with pleading tenderness.” In his “Le Livre de la Pitie et de la Mort” there is a terrible picture of a cat dying of mange. “It must have felt in its awful plight the worst of all sufferings of a cat—that of not being able to make its toilet, to lick its fur, and to groom itself with the care cats always bestow upon this operation.” A cat which formed part of the Loti household for ten years had her own visiting cards, inscribed “Mlle Moumoutte.”

  Figure 8.17. Portrait of Pierre Loti, Henri Rousseau, 1891, Kunsthaus, Zurich

  The French artist Édouard Manet sketched and painted cats even decorating his personal letters with them. In a portrait of his wife, their pet cat Zizi nestles contentedly in her lap. In his controversial painting Olympia, (figure 8.18) a nude prostitute lies on a bed with a black cat at her feet as a symbol of sexuality and promiscuity. The painting caused quite a stir in the Paris art world of the time.

  Figure 8.18. Olympia, Édouard Manet, 1863, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

  Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) an inspiration to 20th century artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Félix Vallotton, began painting off and on in 1873 and became friends with Camille Pissarro who also included cats in his works. Influenced by folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin’s new style was termed Cloisonnism because of his use of blocks of color divided by lines. During his nine week stay with Van Gogh in 1888, the two artists worked together (figure 8.19).

  In Gauguin’s A Little Cat (1888) our eyes are drawn to the cat, as it is the only figure in the painting, and it stands out dramatically against the gold and orange background. In 1888, Gauguin had defined his goal as “ ——synthesis of form and color derived from the observation of only the dominant element.” Both A Little Cat and Mimi and her Cat can serve as examples of this. After travelling to Tahiti, Gauguin continued to paint, and the indispensable cat is present in many of these works as well. In the painting Tahitian Woman and Two Children (1901) a woman sits in a chair with a little boy on her lap while a girl stands in back at her side holding a white cat. Gauguin chose to add only white cats to these Tahitian paintings, perhaps due to the white cat being a symbol of purity and fertility (figure 8.20). In his more Western-oriented paintings, his cats are usually two colors: brown/orange and white or even calico as in Flowers and Cats and Mimi and her Cat. The only exception is A Little Cat, which is black. Even though quite a prolific painter, Gauguin only became popular after his death. However, his use of bold colors and primitive style still continues to influence artists.

  Figure 8.19. Hand with a Bowl and a Cat, Vincent Van Gogh, 1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

  Men were not the only artists to find the cat a great addition to paintings. Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844-1926) and other female artists such as Cecilia Beaux used the cat as an age-old symbol of domesticity, motherhood and sexuality in their paintings. Cassatt became close friends with Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, and was the private student of Jean-Léon Gérôme. After some time, she was invited to join the Impressionist’s group which only had one other female member, Berthe Morisot, another artist who included cats in her paintings, with whom Cassatt became close friends. Cassatt remained with the Impressionists until around 1886, but afterward started experimenting with other techniques, and eventually broke away from the group. The 1890’s were her most prolific and creative years. In the 1900’s, she began to concentrate almost exclusively on mother and child scenes where a cat is sometimes present to accentuate the idea of motherhood and domesticity (figure 8.21).

  Figure 8.20. Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Detail), Paul Gauguin, 1897-1898, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

  Nineteenth century French artists who pursued art for art’s sake and looked away from the moralizing bourgeoisie found the cat an apt mascot. Because of its historical association with demons and the occult, the cat became the perfect symbol for the artist’s rebellion against societal convention. Artists equated their own ability to see through the ordinary with superior perceptiveness to that of the cat’s cool, indifferent detachment.

  Figure 8.21. Sara Holding a Cat, Mary Cassatt, 1908, Private Collection

  CATS AND MUSICIANS

  Likewise, the great musicians of the age kept cats as pets and often included them in their operatic compositions. Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), Rimsky Korsakov (1844-1908), Giacchino Rossini (1792-1868) and Ignacy Paderewski (1860-1941) loved the cat too. The Russian composers Alexander Borodin and Rimsky Korsakov were friends. Borodin was a well-known cat lover and Rimsky-Korsakov even wrote about Borodin’s unruly cats. “Many cats, that the Borodins’ lodged, marched back and forth on the table, thrusting their noses into the plates or leaping on the backs of the guests. These felines enjoyed the protection of Catherine Sergueïevna. They all had biographies. One was called Fisher because he was successful in catching fish through the holes in the frozen river. Another, known as Lelong, had the habit of bringing home kittens in his teeth which were added to the household. More than once, dining there, I have observed a cat walking along the table. When he reached my plate I drove him away; then Catherine Sergueïevna would defend him and recount his biography. Another installed himself on Borodin’s shoulders and heated him mercilessly. ‘Look here, sir, this is too much!’ cried Borodin, but the cat never moved” (Van Vechten, 1921).

  The Italian composer Giacchino Rossini (1792-1868) who is famous for writing The Barber of Seville is also attributed to writing Duetto Buffo dei due Gatti, (“humorous duet for two cats”). A popular performance piece for two sopranos, it is often performed as a concert encore. The “lyrics” consist entirely of the repeated word “miau” (“meow”) †.

  Ignacy Paderewski was a Polish composer and pianist who became the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Poland in 1919, and is claimed to have been calmed by a cat during his first piano concerto. Paderewski was suffering from a bout of stage fright at his first major concert in London when an errant cat jumped into his lap during the performance. Not at all put off, Paderewski allowed the cat to remain in his lap throughout the performance, perhaps being comforted by the purring feline (Lane, 2004).

  CATS AND WRITERS

  But it was in literature and poetry that the cat found its optimum medium. Almost all of the great writers and poets from all over the world referred to the feline in their writings. From Dickens to Mark Twain, cats were at the sides of the century’s writers and poets.

  When one of Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870) cats, originally named William, gave birth to kittens in his study, she was appropriately renamed Willamena. Dickens was quite fond of one of her female kittens and named her “Master’s Cat”. While he wrote, she kept him company, sometimes annoyingly extinguishing the candle on his desk. It stands to reason that Dickens is quoted as saying, “What greater gift than the love of a cat.” In 1862, Dickens was so distressed by the loss of his cat, Bob, that he had the cat’s paw stuffed and mounted rather macabrely on an ivory letter opener engraved with “C.D., In memory of Bob, 1862” †(figure 8.22). The great writer also made sure to include cats in his literary works. In Bleak House and The Uncommercial Traveller he used the cat as a metaphor for a cruel usurious society. Bleak House’s cat, Lady Jane (originally bought for her skin) is loved by Krook who carries her around on his shoulder, but yet he is upset that the cat clingingly follows him, ‘winding her lithe tail and licking her lips
’. When the cat stares at Miss Flite’s cage of birds, she represents a predatory society. Both Krook and the cat can be metaphors for warlock and familiar. Krook’s mysterious knowledge and his spontaneous combustion suggest occult powers, and Lady Jane is by his side as an evil familiar (Rogers, 2006, p. 66).

  Dickens negatively equated cats and women in The Uncommercial Traveller (1860) where he called the cats sluttish housewives and women feral cats.

  “…so the cats of shy neighborhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the surplus population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the avenues to cat’s meat; not only is there a moral and politico-economical haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but they evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I’m on terms of recognition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in St. George’s Fields, —In appearance they are very like the women among whom they live. They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street, without any preparation. They leave their young families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frowzily quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners…. I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of things” (Dickens, 1860, p. 103).