Cats in the World of Art & Painting

The Large Cat (1657), Cornelis Visscher

Growing up and when my daughter was young we had several cats, mainly tabbies. I found this engraving by Dutch artist Cornelis Visscher (1629-58) which you can see at the Art Institute of Chicago. The website calls this "one of the softest, most tactile renditions of a cat ever printed". I agree!

Chachi the Cat (2021), J. Patterson

This post is inspired by a recent colored pencil drawing of a barn cat completed by my brother, who also paints other subjects such as dogs and horses. In May of last year, for my 100th post, I published Anthropomorphic Art -- Animals as Humans, which was inspired by a kitschy portrait of a squirrel wearing glasses that my brother shared from a visit to his optometrist's office. It included the Abraham Teniers painting of cats being pampered by monkeys (check it out!).

Bo from Purrfect Pals

My own cat creation happened at a Saturday Sit-Stay-'n'-Play painting event at the Everett Mall when I first started volunteering with PawsWithCause.

Lina from Purrfect Pals

Another senior participant painted this awesome calico cat portrait.

I enjoy seeing how the public gets inspired by these shelter animals. Being an art docent is a rewarding endeavor that helps people of all ages find their inner artist.

White Angora Cat (1761), Bachelier

Another favorite of mine is the white angora cat beautifully (oil) painted by French artist, Jean-Jaques Bachelier. Here we see a cat chasing a butterfly. The cat's fur is well-executed. Though I wouldn't want to have to brush that coat!

Two Cats Blue and Yellow
(1912), Franz Marc

Cats on a Red Cloth (1909),
Franz Marc

20th century German Expressionist Franz Marc captured some cats sleeping or grooming themselves. The first painting is more realistic than his second more expressive Cubist work. Can you find the mouse?

18th century English artist Thomas Gainsborough also studied feline positions of the Great Cat. According to the referenced link, his black-and-white chalk drawing is similar to that of another famous artist from the 15th century.

Apparently, I missed Paul Gauguin's Flowers and Cats (1899) while visiting the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen, Denmark on our cruise to the Baltics in June 2019.

Another recent post, entitled Making Connections with Artists & Animals features the cats of French Fauvist Henri Matisse.

Many of the world's most famous artists kept cats as pets. Here's a list:

Henri Matisse (Minouche, Coussi, and Le Puce); Pierre Bonnard (Cat);

Salvador Dali (Babou); Gustav Klimt (Katze); Georgia O’Keeffe (Siamese); 

Pablo Picasso (Minou); Louis Wain (Peter); Andy Warhol (Sam); and

        Wassily Kandinsky (Vaske)

We lost American artist Laurel Burch in 2007. She was famous for her bold cat designs such as those featured in one of her books, Fantastic Felines (1997). I believe we've done a jigsaw puzzle like this.

Making Connections with Artists & Animals

The Old Guitarist (1903-4), Picasso

Many of my posts connect art elements and principles to the artists and movements that were inspired by them. Two websites that I recently visited argue that an artist's fame comes from the connections they made with other artists rather than from their own creativity:

Study Finds Artists Become Famous through Their Friends, Not the Originality of Their Work and

Artists Can Become Famous Through Connections and Not Their Creativity

I like to look for famous artwork in movies and on TV. Picasso's The Old Guitarist frequently appears in episodes of Bewitched, which I watch repeatedly in reruns. It was hung rotated 90 degrees to the right to fit over the Stephens' fireplace. The Cleavers' front door on Leave it to Beaver is flanked by Sir Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie (1794) and Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy (1770). Officers Row on Fort Worden in Port Townsend, WA even displayed this pair (in needlepoint) in the dining room of one of the houses we rented there. I hadn't connected the two Thomas's.

Here are three Picasso-style animal portraits. The Lab on the left may actually resemble Cubist artwork by Georges Braque.

          

One of my posts identifies the Fathers of Art Movements and further mentions the social network of member artists who shared similar visions that inspired their own unique styles and interpretations. Picasso developed his style by admiring African sculpture, particularly traditional African masks and ancient Egyptian art, as well as Iberian sculpture. He was influenced by the art of Paul Klee, as well as French painters Paul Cézanne and Eugène Delacroix.

Las Meninas (1957), Picasso

In 10 Quotes from Famous Artists - My Own Interpretation, Picasso is quoted as saying, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." In 1957, Picasso rescued a dachshund named Lump who had been diagnosed with a spinal condition. He lived 10 years longer than expected and died 10 days before his master. Picasso featured Lump as the dog in his recreation of Diego Velázquez' Las Meninas (1656).

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889), Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and Gustav Klimt were all influenced by Japanese art. Van Gogh's interpretations can be seen hanging on the walls of his bedroom in his own paintings. His "The Angelus (After Millet)" is almost a direct copy of Jean-François Millet's painting but with his own color scheme.

Head of a Dog (1882), Monet

Claude Monet's garden is famous for its Japanese footbridge, which is prominent in his Waterlilies series. We visited his garden in Giverny, France in May 2011 on our trip to France and Italy. Monet was influenced by Manet, Boudin, Hokusai and Jongkind. Monet also painted animals, such as the domesticated turkeys I mentioned in my recent Thanksgiving Artwork post. He even painted a dog's head.

Doge Andrea Gritti (c1545), Titian

Continuing with Japanese connections, there is an Internet meme called doge which first appeared in 2013 and is based on a Japanese Shiba Inu dog named Kabosu. The word doge actually refers to an Italian magistrate from Venice or Genoa, dating back to the 16th century. It is also a word that is popular in the game of Scrabble. My daughter recently returned from a visit to Italy that included Venice. Her Korean village dog is a rescue that she originally thought was a Shiba Inu. 

One of my colleagues at Paws with Cause creates whimsical portraits of shelter animals dressed in regal attire. I love this portrait of Pepe the Dog. Pepe would qualify as the Doge of his animal shelter. While my friend and fellow resident artist is not famous, she is certainly creative!

Lady with an Ermine (c1490), da Vinci

The next artist on the mindshare index of famous artists is Leonardo da Vinci. He was influenced by Lorenzo de Medici, John Argyropoulos and Andrea del Verrocchio. I like how his Mona Lisa (1503) has been called a counterpart to Vermeer's The Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) -- a.k.a. "the Mona Lisa of the North." I like his unusual Lady with an Ermine (c1490). The ermine (similar to a ferret) is a member of the family Mustelidae. The Washington Ferret Rescue and Shelter in Kirkland, WA  has ~150 ferrets looking to be adopted as fur-ever pets. While they aren't currently supported by Paws with Cause, they certainly seem worthy of support. I wish I had a ferret portrait to show you!

Le Civilisateur (1946), Magritte

The next artist on the list is Surrealist Salvador Dali, who was influenced by Pablo Picasso, René Magritte and Joan Miró. Dali often included animals in his dreamlike paintings and has been photographed walking his anteater and petting his ocelot (See Surrealists and Their Pets.). Magritte's portrait of his pet Pomeranian-Spitz, fetched €489,000 in March 2018. Just think of the shelter pets we could support with that kind of Euro!

Kachina, le Chien de Peggy Guggenheim (1946), Ernst

Max Ernst's portrait of his Pekingese, Kachina looks more like a lioness of grand scale in this Hopi landscape. Apparently, he had lived with American art collector Peggy Guggenheim (her dog?) before marrying American artist Dorothea Tanning.

Valse bleue (1954), Tanning

Tanning also painted an oversized Kachina in her Blue Waltz later in 1954. The painting is certainly surreal and the color scheme reminds me of paintings of couples by Marc Chagall. Some websites defined Kachina as a Lhasa Apso Terrier, rather than a Pekingese, which suits the lion reference better.

Le chat aux poissons rouges
(1914), Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was influenced by Asian and African art, Post-Impressionists Gauguin, Cézanne, and Van Gogh, and his Mentor, Camille Pissarro. He was also a lover of animals, mainly cats, dogs, and doves. See The Friday Art Cat for Matisse's Interior with Goldfish (1914) and a second Etsy version by Deborah Julian where she adds Matisse's two cats -- Minouche and Coussi, or a black cat named la Puce (the flea). Here is his The Cat with Red Fish. I love these happy paintings. This one is reminiscent of others painted in the same room with the red printed wallpaper and window to the outside.

In keeping with the theme, here is an animal portrait that was painted in an event I organized on behalf of PawsWithCause for the shelter, South County Cats. I'm likening it to paintings by Fauvist Henri Matisse for its straight-out-of-the-tube colors.

"The Sower" (1888), Van Gogh

The striped backside of the cat makes me think of the background of Van Gogh's painting, "The Sower".

You may also like to read about The Most Famous Arty Pet Lovers And Their Furry Friends. For example, Georgia O'Keeffe's first dog was a poodle named Pancho, and she also had a total of six Chows as pets over her lifetime. Like Picasso, Andy Warhol favored dachshunds and kept two as pets.

Birds in Contemporary Art & Photography

Contemporary Art

Bird Spectrum (2019), James Prosek

This post is inspired by artist, writer, and naturalist, James Prosek, who was born on this day in 1975. His main subjects are birds and fish. He has written several books, including his first book, Trout: An Illustrated History (1996), which included watercolors of seventy species and subspecies of North American trout. His Art, Artifact, Artifice exhibition was on view from February through June 2020, at the Yale University Art Gallery. It showcased his Bird Spectrum, a color arrangement of 200 digitally photographed bird specimens from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History collection. At first glance, it looks like schools of colorful fish swimming in a rainbow formation.

2018

2003

Prosek has also written books about fly fishing. You may also enjoy reading The Art of the Fishing Fly by Tony Lolli  (Author) and Bruce Curtis (Photographer). I have a friend from Montesano, Washington who makes his own flies and he is another inspiration for this post.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum had a wonderful exhibition from October 2014 - February 2015, called The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art. Check out the beautiful artwork by multiple artists, including Prosek's mural depicting the migration of a flock of passenger pigeons.

What once was is no more: Passing like a thought, flight into memory (2014), James Prosek

Modern Art

Wheat  Field with Crows (July 1890), Van Gogh

By contrast, we have Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Crows, which though colorful creates an ominous scene with a road that prematurely ends. One of his last compositions, it remains one of my all-time favorite bird paintings. I recall how in grade school we used to draw birds as squiggly 'V' shapes.

Sailboat At Le Petit Gennevilliers
(1874), Monet

Magpie (1868-69), Monet

I also love Claude Monet's subject bird perched on a fence amidst a marvelous snow scene. And his very impressionistic cloud of birds swarming above a sailboat.

Sea Gulls (1938), Newell Convers Wyeth

You may also be aware of how much I am in awe of the works of the amazing Wyeth family of Chadsford Township, Pennsylvania. The family's patriarch, N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), is known for having illustrated many books, including Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Soaring (1942-50), Andrew Wyeth

His son, Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) began by painting watercolors and then tempera paintings such as his iconic Christina's World. The Seattle Art Museum showed his In Retrospect exhibit from October 2017 thru January 2018.

The Rookery (1977), Jamie Wyeth

Andrew's son, Jamie Wyeth was born one year after his grandfather's death and has carried on the Wyeth legacy with great skill.

In researching this topic, I stumbled upon this biography of British artist and bird illustrator, Eric Ennion (1900-1981). You'll have to check out the link, as his illustrations are copyrighted by his estate. Also, check out these 10 Stunning Bird Photos to Inspire You.

Photography

And one of my favorites by my sister-in-law. Karen Patterson of a bird on horseback. It looks like the bird is contemplating a snowy mountain climb.

Coopers Hawk, Enumclaw, WA

Here's a wonderful photograph by my friend and Black Diamond Arts Alliance colleague, Zbig Kasprzyk. The softened texture of the background with its lines and muted colors is a subtle contrast that harmonizes and unifies the composition. Even the stump repeats the same green, blue, and tan colors.

Pumpkin Carving

Let's finish with my 2020 pumpkin carving of a raven spreading its wings in front of a harvest moon. I look forward to selecting and carving pumpkins every year, taking my inspiration from multiple sources. I copied the design from an image I found on the web to challenge myself and hone my carving skills. 

Black Diamond Anniversary -- Artists Who Used Diamond Shapes

In honor of my one-year anniversary of living in Black Diamond, an old coal-mining town, we will be exploring diamond-shaped patterns in art. 

Growing up, our rec room floors were laid with large black-and-white square tiles that resembled a checkerboard or a diamond pattern similar to those in Vermeer (1632-75) paintings such as “The Art of Painting” (1665-67). Ours were laid 300 years later!

Two Harlequins (1886), Degas

Harlequins

Modern artists, such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Emil Betzler (1892-1974) used a diamond pattern in their harlequin paintings. The pose of Degas' harlequin is like one of his ballerinas warming up before a performance.

I wonder if Cezanne was channeling Vermeer when he painted the similarly-patterned curtains in his background. The white hat also looks like something out of Vermeer's era.

Pierrot and Harlequin (1888), Cezanne

The Two Saltimbanques (1901), Picasso

Harlequins 2 (ca. 1960), Betzler

Neo-Plasticism and Op Art

Later, in the eras of Neo-Plasticism (1917-1944) -- Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Ilya Bolotowsky (1907-1981) -- and Op Art (the 1960s and 1970s) -- Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) --engaged in non-objective art employing geometric shapes such as the diamond.  Mondrian even took his compositions typically painted on a square canvas and rotated them 45 degrees. He originally painted Broadway Boogie Woogie in 1942-3, then in 1944, just before the artist’s death, he painted the similar Victory Boogie Woogie, which he oriented like a diamond but never completed. 

Black Diamond (ca. 1970), Bolotowsky

Another artist who used the style espoused by Mondrian was Ilya Bolotowsky, who began to include the diamond shape in his art in 1947.

I love the opposing color scheme in this work by Op Artist, Victor Vasarely. It is also a study of value gradation. How wonderful to be able to precisely record what one's brain is imagining and to preserve and communicate such images for other brains to interpret!

In 1979, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) made several gold screen-prints using diamond dust, including this portrait of fellow artist, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). Because this was part of the Warhol exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2018, my photo captured his image reflecting off the opposite wall. As I said in another post in which I displayed this photo -- doubly creepy!!

As a nod to my Arizona friend who quilts, here is a fine example of a diamond pattern sewn into a quilt. It's actually made up of small triangles arranged such they combine to form larger diamond shapes.

Now let's move to paintings showing workers in coal mines and other venues. 

Miners and Other Workers

Workers in the Snow (1912), Munch

When I went looking for paintings of miners, I immediately thought of Edvard Munch, whose works we saw at his museum in Oslo, Norway while on our cruise of the Baltics in June 2019. It was impressive to see Munch's painting alongside a matching sculpture of workers (not necessarily miners) carrying shovels.

British artist, Norman Cornish (1919-2014) is most famous for his drawings and paintings of English miners. His Cornish Pit Road reminds me of the sad figures seen in paintings by Munch and Van Gogh.

His pastels painting of Two Miners, supposedly from the 1980s, is particularly moving. He traveled 'Pit Road' many times to and from the mines for 33 years before turning to the art of painting.

Miners' Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal (1882), Van Gogh

Van Gogh painted coal miners' wives, who were also laborers. I marvel at the obscure Van Gogh paintings that I find when doing research about other topics. After all, he didn't just paint wheat fields and beautiful landscapes dotted with cypress trees and starlit skies.

Twenty-first-century artist, John Scott Martin, also from the UK, who has recently been making linocuts commemorating Cornish mineworkers (like his grandfather). Such workers mined coal, tin, copper, silver, zinc, and even arsenic.

Martin's work is quite impressive!

In 2013, the City of Black Diamond dedicated this bronze statue of a miner, created by artist, Paul Crites, along with a 28-ft granite wall engraved with the names of miners who died in Washington state coal mines. You can read about Black Diamond history here.

Unfortunately, this year's Miner's Day was canceled due to COVID-19.