Cats in Art: Black Cat (Kirchner)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi. This is post 4 of 4 examining the cat works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from the early 1900s.


I thought I was done with Kirchner after 3 paintings, but then I was browsing and came across another.  That's the thing with this series: art history is not found at one place.  For example, I've been on numerous sites that purport to be "...the complete works of xxxxx" and then another image, previously unseen (by me), pops up somewhere else.

Anyway, here's the next (last?) Kirchner painting:

Image credit Art in the Picture, here.  Black Cat, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1926, oil on canvas, size ?, held by ?

 

 

Not to anthropomorphize too much, but the kitty is, well, simply gorgeous.  That's the only word, to me, that does this image justice.  Sleek, powerful, regal...you just run out of words and are left with gorgeous.

 

And maybe I'm playing too much of the armchair psychologist here, but notice how the background is so much more subdued that Kirchner's former use of garish, clashing colors?  I'm thinking that his WW I experiences have perhaps faded and he's just more at peace when he painted this in 1926.

 

Actually, the background seems almost Van Gogh-like--greenish blue plants and flowers.

 

Anyway, before you click off my site, take one more look at the Black Cat by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

 

I defy you to come up with a more apt descriptor than the word gorgeous.