Cats in Art: Cat and Girl (Foujita)

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 the eighth in a series of posts of the cat art of Leonard Foujita.

Image credit WikiArt, here.  Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita,  Cat and Girl, 1956, media and size unspecified, held in a private collection.

Foujita's cat in this painting, which comes quite late in his painting career, is almost cartoonish in its facial expression.  Not that this is a bad thing; cats (and dogs) undoubtedly have quite an array of distinct facial expressions.  This kitty looks inquisitive and fascinated by something...yet the body language to me seems like it is not ready to bolt.  It's more of a stationary curiosity if there is such a thing in the kitty world, while not yet ready to get too close to whatever it is out there.

And the girl: she, too, is looking intently in the same direction as the cat, off  to the painter's right.  Her expression is the human equivalent of the cat's: total absorption.