Cats in Art: Still Life With a Cat (Desportes)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art.  Having moved on from Stefano Zuffi's marvelous work, The Cat in Art, I am now using some ideas from Caroline Bugler's equally impressive book, The Cat/3500 Years of the Cat in Art.  

This'll be the fifth of several Alexandre-Francois Desportes paintings that will be featured here.

Image credit The Aetheneum, Still Life With a Cat, Alexandre-Francois Desportes, 1724, oil on canvas, no information on dimensions, held in a private collection.

The kitty close-up from the upper right of the painting:

I am blown away by the awesome detail that Desportes brings to this painting.  Just look at the face of this kitty, and the rendering of the fur and posture.

Those poor, pathetic mushrooms are about to be swept from the table and some real food pulled down.

Probably as much as--or more than--any painter I have featured over these past 5+ years of my Cats in Art posts, my hat is off to Desportes for his near-photographic realism of the feline form.  And I have to assume that any cat he "owned" was a lucky kitty, indeed.


[Gary note: With my Cats in Arts posts, I encourage you to scope out the art appreciation site Artsy (I have no financial interest in the site, I just like it), where you can explore many aspects of the world of art.  You'll certainly be entertained and enlightened!]