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?"