Cats in Art: Boy With a Cat (Wood)

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 Pinterest,  Boy With a Cat, Christopher Wood, 1926, oil on canvas, 59" x 23", held by Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, UK.

And the kitty close-up:

Bugler's comments:

The Siamese cat makes an appearance in Western art only after the turn of the twentieth century, following the breed's introduction to Europe.  This elegant example is being stroked by the artist's friend Jean Bourgoint, who, with his sister Jeanne, was one of the models for the siblings in Jean Cocteau's novel Les Enfants Terrible (1929).

Seems that artist Wood was short lived, dying at age 29.  Too bad, his cat art may have been epic for the ages.

This poor kitty is obviously in distress: just look at the claws, as though there were an earthquake in progress and the lap upon which the cat was lying was rolling violently to and fro.  Or put another way, "I am so out of here.  Just have to wait for my opening."

This is an oddly proportioned image, some five feet tall by only a couple of feet wide. My default move in obtaining an image for a Cats in Art blog post is to first go to the holder of the painting.  Unfortunately, the image on the Kettle's Yard Museum website was not easily sized to fit Mister Tristan, (the blog, not the 9 year old human being), so I had to resort to the secondary source 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!]