Cats in Art: Covered Cat Dish (Westmoreland Glass Specialty Co)

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.  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 Gary, taken at the Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, PA, Covered Cat Dish, ca 1895, Westmoreland Glass Specialty Company, Grapeville, PA, opaque blue and white glass, pressed.

The bride and I were back in Pittsburgh in October to see the Paul Simon concert with our college friends (it was GREAT!).  During a rainy afternoon we needed to stay inside so we headed to the Heinz History Center where the past of Pittsburgh, with a special emphasis on the Heinz Company, is superbly documented.

The museum was short on cats, with this gorgeous exception.  It literally is little larger than a muffin, but just beautiful.

As a special treat, here are a couple of advice-y nuggets from the founder of the feast himself, H. J. Heinz:

Armistice Day...Every Family Has a Story

[Gary Note: Blogging, of late, has been taking a back seat to life...which is as it should be.  But today you're getting a pair of posts!]

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Armistice Day...Every Family Has a Story

I am reposting the same post I have put up for the past several years on 11 Nov, commemorating the end of World War I.

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For Veteran's Armistice Day (as it was originally called)....

Every family has a story. My mother told me of my great-grandfather, Julius (or Jules?) Brinkmann, who was killed on this date in 1918 in World War I on the Western Front.

Word of the armistice, which took effect the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, did not reach all the lines in real time. He was killed sometime later that day, AFTER the armistice.

He would have been one of the very last casualties of the Great War. You know, the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Oh, and he was a German. Funny, that really doesn't seem to matter, does it?

What is your family story? Please comment.

This is a generic photo, not of Julius--because my Mom's family lost ALL their possessions, including family photos, when they were bombed out in Frankfurt in WW II--but it could have been.

Photo credit here.

Cats in Art: Four Studies of Kittens (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.  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 Community ArtAuthority, Four Studies of Kittens, Alexandre-Francois Desportes, ca 1710, oil on light brown paper, 10" x 20", held in a private collection.

Bulger's comment:

The artist has depicted yowling kittens so convincingly that one can almost hear their cries.  Desportes was the foremost animal painter in France in the early years of the 18th century...his considerable success was founded on accurate observation and the ability to convey a sense of each animal as an individual.

What's not to like about kittens, except that these guys all seem to be in some greater or lesser extent of agitation?  The only one of the crew that seems somewhat calmer than the other felines is the one at the top center, and even that kitty seems a tad on edge as it seems to mew rather than holler.

Bulger believes that this oil sketch was later finalized as this painting.  I featured that painting here at Cats in Art a couple of years ago.

Image credit Community ArtAuthority, A Dog and a Cat Fighting in a Kitchen Interior.

[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: Gray Cat on a Cushion (Kirchner)

Sorry for being dark, changes coming. Here is a Cats in Art post that I ran 5 years ago in Nov 2013.  Here's the original link.

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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 post 2 of 3 examining the cat works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and, like last week, is a post-World War I work.

Image credit Art is Not for Sissies, here.  Gray Cat on a Cushion, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1919-20, oil on canvas, 31" x 27", held by Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany.

Zuffi comments:  

A comparison between Kirchner's works before and after the First World War highlights with dramatic effect the state of mind of a German intellectual.  The cat is tense, the forward-pointing whiskers a clear sign of nervousness; and its tail looks as it is about to beat against the cushion.  The animal's glaring eyes and the violent colors in the background, where the fabric seems to evoke explosive flashes of light, add to this painting's sense of tension.

In this image Zuffi descriptively nails it--the kitty is agitated, restless, ready to detonate.  One would try to pet this cat at one's own risk (I know this, for we have a similarly twitchy cat who can go from a hiss to a purr--and back--in less than 10 seconds).

I do love the background as well.  The colors are quite at odds with the central image of the cat, but contribute to the overall discordance of the scene.

In looking at the series of chronological works of Kirchner, I could see the light openness of his earlier works being supplanted by his somewhat darker post-war art.  He was quite changed by his experiences as a soldier in the war...and who could not be?

Here is a telling quote from Kirchner himself on the war (as found in The Art Story, here):

"The heaviest burden of all is the pressure of the war and the increasing superficiality. It gives me incessantly the impression of a bloody carnival. I feel as though the outcome is in the air and everything is topsy-turvy. All the same, I keep on trying to get some order in my thoughts and to create a picture of the age out of confusion, which is after all my function." 

Through all the madness, Kirchner still knew what he had to do as an artist:

 "...I keep on trying to get some order in my thoughts and to create a picture of the age out of confusion, which is after all my function."

Cats in Art: La Duchesse Abrantes et le General Junot (Gerard)

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.  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).

This is the last of several posts on the cat art of Marguerite Gerard.

Image credit The Athenaeum, La Duchesse Abrantes et le General Junot, Marguerite Gerard, no other information available.

The kitty close-up reveals (poorly) a cat crouched down at the front left corner:

After the almost in-your-face cats in my recent posts on Gerard, this nondescript gray cat, whose form is scarcely recognizable as a feline, huddles unobtrusively in an otherwise bright, cheery painting.

Why Gerard painted this gray kitty this way, adding it to this social image, will remain forever a mystery.  I'm thinking the most simple explanation: this cat belonged to the Duchesse, who requested it be painted for posterity.  Thus an unidentified little gray cat from a couple of centuries ago achieves immortality of sorts.

[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: Cat's Triumph (Gerard)

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.  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).

This is the fourth of several posts on the cat art of Marguerite Gerard.

Image credit The Athenaeum, Cat's Triumph, Marguerite Gerard, 1785, held by the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Russian Federation - Moscow, no other information available.


And the kitty close-up:

I guess the work's title--Cat's Triumph--derives from the fact that the primary human is holding the cat, not the dog.

Paintbrush drop, walk off out of the studio.

[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 Beloved Child (Gerard)

Sorry for no post last week.  Life, etc.
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.  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).

This is the third of several posts on the cat art of Marguerite Gerard.

Image credit The Athenaeum, The Beloved Child, Marguerite Gerard, oil on canvas, 17" x 22", held by Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. 

And the kitty close-up:

Yeah that's just what a cat would like: riding in a sled, getting pulled/pushed by a couple of women, while being held by a toddler, with a big dog a mere couple of feet away. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Ms. Gerard must have rolled in different cat circles than I do.

[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: Motherhood (Gerard)

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.  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).

This is the second of several posts on the cat art of Marguerite Gerard.

Image credit The Athenaeum, Motherhood, Marguerite Gerard, 1805, medium and size unspecified, held by The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts  (Russian Federation - Moscow).

And the kitty close-up:

To me it appears that there are a pair of kitties here: the obvious white one, plus a dark cat closer to the painter.  The white cat seems at first fascinated with the mom and the toddler, although upon looking more, the eyes seem more directed towards the other cat or the artist rather than the mother/child combo.   

So....we have a cat (or a pair of kitties) not all that interested in Motherhood.  Figures.

FYI, there's another Gerard painting called Motherhood, sans chat.  And one also called Motherhood, avec chat, that I only can seem to located on Pinterest.

[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!]