Cats in Art: Singeree in Een Wachtpost (Teniers)

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 is the second of two images from Abraham Teniers.

Image credit Rijksmuseum, Singeree in Een Wachtpost, Abraham Teniers, ca 1650, engraving, approx 30" x 20", held by Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Holland.

And the close-up of the unfortunate kitty in the doorway on the right side:

The Flemish title of the work is explained via Wikipedia:

Abraham Teniers contributed to the spread of the genre of the 'monkey scene', also called 'singerie' (a word, which in French means a 'comical grimace, behaviour or trick'). Comical scenes with monkeys appearing in human attire and a human environment are a pictorial genre that was initiated in Flemish painting in the 16th century and was subsequently further developed in the 17th century. 

The poor cat is being perp-walked by a bunch of monkeys.  The alleged crime? We know not.  Perhaps the cat was up on the table, was eating house plants on the mantle, or unmercifully pestered the other cats in the household.

[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!]

Cats in Art: A Barber's Shop With Monkeys and Cats (Teniers)

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 will be the first of two images from Abraham Teniers.

Image credit WikiGallery, A Barber's Shop With Monkeys and Cats, Abraham Teniers, 1647, oil on canvas, size unspecified, held by Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

This interesting painting from the middle 1600s is kinda reminiscent of today's paintings of dogs or cats sitting around playing cards and smoking cigars: a lighthearted attempt to get people to laugh.  I guess things were little different 400 years ago.

I count 6 cats and 8 monkeys in this image.  The viewer's eye is drawn first to the vain kitty front and center, who is peering with admiration at its own image in the mirror.

I personally like the dashing cat entering back at the left doorway, with its raking hat and red cloak.

And although my maxim is "Never trust a monkey," this crew of barbers and beauticians seems harmless enough.  At least Teniers has not painted any of the monkeys with any diabolical looks.  They truly seem there just to make the kitties look sharp.

Note that Abraham's brother David Teniers the Younger has been featured here at Mister Tristan three times.  You may want to click over and take a peek at The Alchemist, Cat Tended to by an Old Woman, and Twelfth Night.  

[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!]

Cats in Art: The Alchemist (Teniers)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. The bride and I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently, so the next few Sunday Cats in Art posts will be from that museum. We thoroughly enjoyed looking around the galleries for cats.

Photo by Gary.  This is a detail of painting at Philadelphia Museum of Art The Alchemist, David Teniers the Younger, 1649, oil on panel, transferred to canvas, 23" x 33", held by Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

See the whole image here.  I could not embed that image from the museum web site due to licensing restrictions. 

 

As I searched the web for an image of the whole painting that I could use, I encountered a phenomenon that I've now seen again and again: namely, multiple works by the same painter, often with the same title, held by different museums. 

 

In this case, Teniers seemed smitten with alchemy, making it the focus of at least 3 separate paintings.

 

Given the fact that alchemy is bogus, Teniers would have been better off sticking to something real as his subject: cats.  He did a great job with the kitty in the image above, capturing perfectly the obvious thought of the cat: "What are you staring at?"

 

 

Cats in Art: Cat Tended to by an Old Woman (Teniers)

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.

Image credit here. Click on image to enlarge.

Cat Tended to by an Old Woman (or Cat Having its Fleas Removed by an Old Woman), David Teniers the Younger, c. 1640, oil on canvas, held in a private collection.

Zuffi tells us:

In a poor, humble setting typical of Teniers' paintings, an elderly woman removes fleas from a cat's fur. In Dutch painting of the period, this operation was considered a symbol of morality and cleanliness, as if eliminating parasites from the body also indicated a desire to remove sins from the heart.  In Teniers' case, however, it carries a very different meaning; taking advantage of the cat's enforced immobility in the old woman's grasp, a line of mice passes by unmolested.

This painting is another example of the same work being known under different titles.  Zuffi seems to be the only one calling it Cat Having Its Fleas Removed by an Old Woman. 

I have run across this nomenclature dichotomy numerous times as I research my Cats in Art series of Sunday posts.  I figure it comes from the fact that while artists do tend to sign their work, thereby establishing authorship, works of art rarely have their titles affixed to the work.  Thus if the artist does not leave any sort of written list of works, subsequent "experts" may come up with their own best fit titles...some of which will differ.

 

Cats in Art: "Twelfth Night" (Teniers)

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.

 Image credit here.   Click on image to enlarge.

Twelfth Night, David Teniers the Younger, 1634-40, oil on canvas, 27" x 23", held by Museo Del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Zuffi's words:

Teniers liked merry crowds of people and often set his scenes in inns that were far from refined...Amid the general descent into chaos, the cat [see lower right center] does not lose its customary calm.  Positioned under the very chair of the evening's mock king, it knows perfectly well that this is an opportunity to grab a juicy morsel, even at the cost of the odd inadvertent kick.

One could draw several parallels with ultrarunning...our scenes, too, are often far from refined, and while aid stations often offer tasty morsels, one may suffer an inadvertent kick from a disgruntled volunteer or competitor.