5 Famous Felines: the Cool cats of Art History
Cats have featured in art since humans have been adorning cave walls with their creative efforts. Southern Peru’s Nazca Lines, a collection of geoglyphs that stretch for hundreds of metres and best viewed from the air are thousands of years old. One of the oldest of these geoglyphs features a cat, thought to have been created by the Paracas people sometime around the 7th Century.
However, it probably comes as no surprise that the earliest known cat painting was created by the ancient Egyptians. Well known for venerating felines, cats were an integral part of ancient Egyptian culture. Some speculate that it was the Egyptians who gave cats the personality we attribute to them today. While geoglyphs and tomb paintings are interesting, they’re not the most famous depictions of cats.
Below you’ll find all there is to know about the world’s five most famous felines: the coolest cats of art history.
# 5 Abraham Teniers’ Barber Shop with Monkeys and Cats
Dogs might have given into the vice of poker games, but cats manage to maintain their integrity and haughty personas in Abraham Teniers oil on copper artwork Barber Shop with Monkeys and Cats. This lively and surreal painting show cats being pampered by dexterous monkeys.
Pre-dating the similar styled painting of dogs playing poker by some 400 years, this cat artwork was created between 1663 and 1667. The artist takes us inside a barber shop — run by monkeys. Here cat clients are pampered with steaming hot whisker trims.
If you enjoy a touch of humour with your surrealism, this is a feline work of art that is sure to amuse!
#4 A Cubist Cat Courtesy of Pablo Picasso
Cats are often portrayed as cute bundles of fluff or occasionally regal creatures who deign to allow lowly humans to serve them. Picasso’s 1939 cubist feline — Cat Devouring a Bird — shows felines in a new light, exposing their darker side.
Art critics assert that the painting has little to do with cats and instead is the artist’s commentary on the war that raged in Spain at the time of painting. However, Pablo Picasso is quoted as stating he did not set out to paint the war as he was not that kind of painter.
#3 The Royal Rococo Style Cat
Marguerite Gérard was famous for her sumptuous scenes of domestic life. The Cat’s Lunch, shows a fluffy domestic cat in what we consider to be its natural state — being served by a human. The feline sits atop a red upholstered stool, while a young girl kneels before it holding a saucer of milk that it drinks from.
Painted some time between 1732 and 1806, The Cat’s Lunch wasn’t Marguerite’s only painting with cat, many other portraits and domestic scenes also included feline friends.
#2 Cats in Triplicate
Japanese illustrator, Utagawa Kuniyoshi was almost as famous for his love of cats as his feline inspired artworks. His triptych print Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of Tōkaidō, includes fifty-five cats in various poses and is a humorous take on Japanese woodblock print master, Andō Hiroshige’s famous Fifty-three Stations of Tōkaidō.
Each of the cats in Kuniyoshi’s work illustrates a cat pun aimed to parallel the post-stations of the Eastern Sea Road that were beautifully illustrated in Hiroshige’s original work depicting the various points along the route providing shelter or sustenance.
#1 Black Cat Art: Le Chat Noir
Seen in kitchens, halls and sitting rooms across the UK and Europe and arguably the most famous cat art print of our times was originally meant as an advertisement. The iconic poster was created by Theophile Steinlen for Parisian nightclub, Le Chat Noir, between 1882–1895. It’s thought that the nightclub was the first of its kind.
Steinlen’s other Art Nouveau works often included cats. He was a prolific creator who trained as a designer and went on to make paintings, prints, lithographs and sculpture. Copies of Le Chat Noir and his other cat prints can be bought as posters, framed prints, mugs and coasters on almost any Paris street corner.
Cats appear in almost every style and movement of art since the beginning of human history. Their mercurial natures, graceful figures and unforgettable personalities have proven to be arresting muses for famous and novice artists around the world.
