After several posts on some art that the bride and I just saw in Italy on a wonderful visit in October to the Amalfi Coast, we are back to whatever passes for normal around here.
Image credit art.com (an art reproduction house), Cat Killing Mice in a Landscape, Gottfried Mind, ca 1800, pen and ink with wash on paper, dimensions unspecified, held in a private collection.
And the mandatory kitty close-up:
Bugler tells us about Gottfried Minds and this image:
Described in his own lifetime as feeble-minded (he was probably autistic), he nonetheless had one special gift: the ability to draw and paint cats.....Here is an oddly outsized tortoiseshell and white cat enjoying a gastronomic orgy; mice flee from his gluttonous paws. According to contemporary reports, the artist's cat Minette was always by his side as he worked. She luckily escaped the culling of more than 800 cats ordered by Berne authorities in 1809 in an attempt to counteract a rabies epidemic, but it is said that the artist never recovered from the mass slaughter of his favorite creatures.
Several of my observations:
--I credit this work to the site art.com, which sells art reproductions. Since this work is held in a private collection, I was pretty unsuccessful at finding the work online in any other venue than a for-profit site.
--Note than in Bugler's analysis of the work, she says "...from his gluttonous paws..." when the cat, being a calico, is a female. Bugler does correctly identify Mind's cat Minette (what a cool name!!) as a she a couple of sentences later.
--This calico is in feline heaven--mice everywhere!
[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!]
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