The Cat's Meow: Art History's Feline Obsession

It's in the galleries of Ancient Egypt that we find the most cats in the museum: sculptures, canopic jars, mummies... They are associated with the goddess Bastet, the quiet version of Sekhmet, who protects humanity from chaos.

This bronze cat sculpture, representing Bastet, originally had eyes inlaid with stones imitating the iris and cornea.

In this Golden Age landscape, the cat is part of the scenery, just like the other animals depicted. This painting by Sébastien Vrancx illustrates a passage from the Aeneid, where the mythological hero finds his father in the Elysian Fields.

Sébastien Vrancx gives it a prominent place, almost at the level of the two main protagonists of the painting.

This cat by Abraham Mignon with a human nose is the mascot of the museum of Fine Arts of Lyon on the internet. The cat, its humanoid face frozen in fear, is the hidden star of the painting.

It has just knocked over the vase containing the splendid bouquet of flowers to catch a fleeing mouse.

The motif of the cat and the open mousetrap has sometimes been compared to a parable from the Emblemata amatoria, that of the man who knows how to live neither with love nor without love, just like the mouse who cannot choose between the mousetrap and the cat.

The curiosity of this symbolic language coexists with the magnificence of the floral composition. The dynamic in the painting announces an inevitable disorder, with water spilling from the vase, and flowers ready to fall, in an ultimate allegory of vanity.

Frans Snyders was a specialist in large-format still lifes in Flanders during the first half of the 17th century. The motif of the kitchen table laden with game is part of the great tradition of market or butcher stalls depictions.

The picturesque detail of the cat and her kittens taking advantage of the dog's sleep to improve their lot introduces a narrative element into this inventory inspired by hunting.

Augustin Thierrat, a 19th-century painter, excels in the art of interior painting. The realism of the detail goes so far as to depict the hole tearing the waxed paper of the window pane, opening on a view of Lyon, with the Mont Blanc in the background.

Being part of the decor alongside the old spinner, the cat fulfills its role as a faithful companion accompanying its mistress's work. It catches a ray of sunshine while occupying a prime place in the highly elaborate perspective of the painting.

The work owes its title to the sunlight entering the kitchen through a window arguably placed to the left of the composition. The scullion's face is surrounded by a halo of golden light, creating a pronounced chiaroscuro effect.

More than the subject of the scene, the artist focuses on the light and the play of the sunrays. Kitchen interiors, pretexts for skillful lighting effects, abound in Joseph Bail's oeuvre, with varied pictorial effects on materials and metals.

Here, the young kitchen boy interrupts his work for the cat, who demands some petting, and whose rounded back and closed eyes suggest a purr of pleasure.

This work is a summary of all the genres in which Léonard Foujita excels: portrait and self-portrait, still life, evocation of women. The style of this artist, born in Japan who later settled in Paris, is at the crossroads of traditional Japanese art and Western modernism. 

The artist's face is at the center of the painting. In this self-portrait, he places his cat on the same level as himself, making it not just a simple companion but an equal.