Sunday, July 23, 2017

The Corner of the Studio (Tassaert)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art.  Having moved on from Stefano Zuffi's marvelous work, The Cat in ArtI am now using some ideas from Caroline Bugler's equally impressive book, The Cat/3500 Years of the Cat in Art.  You really should check out and/or own both of these wonderful works, easily available on Amazon or eBay (and I have no financial interest).



Image credit to the art repro site Oceans Bridge, The Corner of the Studio, Octave Tassaert, 1845, oil on canvas, 18" x 15", held by the Louvre, Paris.

And the kitty close-up from the center left:


Bugler tells us:

This painting illustrates perfectly the romantic cliche of a penniless artist starving in his garret...but at least he has some company--a beautiful cat, which characteristically has found the warmest position in the room, in front of the fire.

Couple of comments.  Cats and warmth: duh!

Second, we get used to instant gratification on the web, such that when it doesn't happen we are outraged.  Case in point: the Louvre's searchable database of paintings is pretty crappy in my humble opinion.  Bugler tells us that this work is held there, yet I cannot find any trace of it.  Perhaps it has been sold or traded to another museum.

Third....but, when I Google this work by title and artist, the only hits I get are for art reproduction sites.  Until I started my weekly Cats in Art posts, I had no idea that such enterprises existed.  Basically you can order a brand new, hand-painted repro of some famous artwork, in whatever size you wish (you ought to click over to the Ocean's Bridge site I provide above in the image credit).

I am not making value judgments about the propriety of buying a reproduction, just observing that my search for this work, A Corner of the Studio, was fruitless...except for numerous art reproduction sellers.  

[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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