We’re back again with an excellent felid trifecta, this time with three—count them, three—items of lagniappe. Given the waning interest in this feature, however, I’m still considering deep-sixing it. It’s more work than you think.
First, ArtNet has a nice article on what it calls the “world’s most fabulous cat painting”, called “My Wife’s Lovers”. There’s a Wikipedia article on it, along with a high-resolution reproduction of the painting, which is coming. You’re about to see it. It’s almost here. And yes, here it is (click to enlarge). As the article and Wikipedia entry shows, the painting has a checkered and colorful history.
Click below to read the ArtNet article:
An excerpt:
Carl Kahler’s 1891 painting My Wife’s Lovers just might be the most magnificent painting of cats in the history of art—and the story behind it is one incredible tail! The sumptuous portrait of 42 cats, mostly angoras, was commissioned by the ultimate cat lady, San Francisco millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson, to enshrine some of her favorite feline friends in perpetuity. That’s right: there were others. Some claim she had nearly 300 cats. Others say her clowder maxed out at 50.
In recent years, the painting has enjoyed a new burst of popularity, driven by social media (with social media hashtags such as #meowsterpiece) and bolstered by a stunning 2016 sale at Sotheby’s where it earned a whopping $826,000, more than two times its presale high estimate of $300,000 (that comes out to $19,667 per cat).
The artist behind the work, Carl Kahler, is today known best for such resplendent paintings of cats. Another of his works, Three Black Cats, recently appeared at Sotheby’s this past February. But before taking on the commission for My Wife’s Lovers, the artist had actually never painted one.
Born in Austria in 1856, Kahler established a career in Australia and New Zealand painting horse racing. The artist came to San Francisco en route to Yosemite, where he planned to paint nature scenes. Then fate intervened in the form of an invitation to the mansion of Kate Birdsall Johnson, a millionaire well-known for her art collecting and philanthropy, who offered him the career-altering commission. Other works in her collection included the ethereal 1874 painting Elaine by Toby Edward Rosenthal as well as Greco-Roman antiquities.
Johnson resided at a lavish summer property, known as Buena Vista Castle, which was famously the largest estate north of the Golden Gate. The sprawling grounds had formerly been the Haraszthy family vineyard (today, it is home to the Bartholomew Estate Vineyards). In the estate’s 40-room Victorian mansion, Johnson’s cats were said to occupy an entire floor and were attended to by their own servants. Along with felines, Johnson kept prize-winning dogs, horses, cattle, and a veritable aviary of cockatoos, parakeets, and canaries. Kahler would spend three years living at the castle, amid this menagerie, sketching the cats and familiarizing himself with their unique personalities.
. . . In its final form, My Wife’s Lovers, completed in 1891, is six feet tall, eight-and-a-half feet wide, and weighs over 200 pounds. Johnson’s 42 felines appear tiered on steps draped with silk and, as with the great Renaissance tableaux, in various states of emotion. Some are resting, playing, and cuddling. A group on the lower left gathers around a moth. At the center of the portrait is Sultan, a handsome, large cat with green eyes and brown and yellow markings on his white fur. Johnson is said to have paid some $3,000 for Sultan on a trip to Paris. Next to Sultan is a white angora cat with blue eyes who is believed to be Johnson’s cat, His Highness (who appeared in another of Kahler’s paintings).
. . .In the 1940s, the painting enjoyed fame as a subsequent set of owners would take My Wife’s Lovers on a national tour and present the painting at Madison Square Garden in New York for a cat show. Some 9,000 prints of the painting were said to have been sold alongside the tour, and in 1949, Cat Magazine called My Wife’s Lovers “the world’s greatest painting of cats.”
Today, Kahler’s magnum opus is back in Northern California, purchased in the Sotheby’s bidding battle by John and Heather Mozart, fittingly eclectic collectors whose passions run from majolica and Portuguese colonial furniture to Elvis’s memorabilia. In 2016, the painting made its most recent public appearance at the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon. While cat and art lovers can only hope this meowvelous painting comes back on view soon, for now, the painting continues to delight on social media.
This is Sultan (l) with what is probably His Highness. Unlike medieval painters, who could never get cats right (they always wound up looking like humans), Kahler did an excellent job, don’t you think? And it’s sad that a 48 ft painting like this is now out of public view.
And its fate as described in Wikipedia:
The center of the painting shows her cat Sultan, bought by Johnson during a trip to Paris. Johnson lent the painting for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and in the next year it was acquired by Ernest Haquette for his Palace of Art Salon in San Francisco. While the salon was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the painting survived it.[5]
My Wife’s Lovers subsequently hung in Frank C. Havens‘ Piedmont Art Gallery in Piedmont, California, and was later purchased by a couple from Chicago. In November 2015, the painting was sold at Sotheby’s to a private California buyer for US$826,000.
In 2016, the Portland Art Museum displayed the piece between February 2 and June 8, 2016, and partnered with the Oregon Humane Society to raise awareness of cat adoptions.
Here’s a social media post; feel free to make your own meme as the painting is in the public domain:
A Tik Tok video of Kahler’s painting, “Three black cats.”
Have you ever felt like you were being watched by a painting? Carl Kahler’s Three Black Cats does just that—but cat lovers find it more cute than creepy. 🐈⬛🐈⬛🐈⬛ This painting will be part of the 19th Century European Art Sale at @Sotheby’s New York beginning February 5, 2025. 🖼️ : Three Black Cats, Carl Kahler (1856 – 1906), oil on canvas #CarlKahler #EuropeanArt #Art #Cats #CatPainting #ThreeBlackCats #Sothebys
********************
Speaking of black cats, here is a memoriam in Canada’s National Post to a well known Canadian moggie, a black cat named Coal. He was o9ne of the Parliament Hill Cat Colony in Ottawa, which I visited (but I guess I didn’t post about it.) Click below to read the Post article.
An excerpt:
In his 17 years of life, Coal was a source of comfort, a documentary movie star and something of a lobbyist.
He lived a bright and happy life roaming Parliament Hill and later after adoption. But, instead of a pension or a job title, he had jet-black fur, whiskers and a long, fluffy tail.
Coal, the last of the Parliament Hill cat colony, died of a rare and aggressive form of cancer on Tuesday beside his human dad, Danny Taurozzi, and feline adopted brother Winston.
“Coal’s condition had become grievous and irremediable, beyond what love, medicine, or therapies could ease,” a post to Coal’s Facebook page read. “It was time to let him go.”
I visited the cats on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill before they were adopted out, but I can’t find the post I made of them. Here’s a bit more:
In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Taurozzi spoke of Coal’s fulfilling life.
The feline had cameos in international documentaries, was a certified therapy cat, visited animal-loving members of Parliament and posed for photos with emergency responders as a “little nudge” for better protection for animals.
“Coal himself was a gentleman feline with a heart of gold, with not one mean bone in his body,” Taurozzi said. “He was a very loyal buddy.”
Before he was starring in movies and posing for photos, Coal called the grassy lawns of Parliament Hill home.
In the 1920s, cats were acquired to deal with rampant rats and mice in the basement of Centre Block. Thirty-five years later, the cats were replaced by pest-controlling chemicals. Without a pension or a dollar to their name, the retired felines remained on the Hill, attracting thousands of tourists, filmmakers, Hill staff and MPs each year.
“I’ve been told more than once that they were stress relievers for the people on the Hill,” Taurozzi said, adding that former prime minister Stephen Harper and former MP John Baird were fans of the sanctuary. “Just to get the pressure out of the day.”
The cats lived in a sanctuary of insulated, small houses similar to the nearby Parliament buildings, maintained and fed by volunteers. The sanctuary was closed in 2013 and all the remaining cats were adopted.
. . . All of his cats are well cared for, Taurozzi underlined, but he went to extra lengths to provide Coal with the best possible medical attention. He sought opinions from three medical veterinary professionals to confirm Coal’s cancer diagnosis and raised $15,000 in donations to pay for medical expenses.
“I shared 12 years with Coal, so I got a really close one with him the day before he died,” Taurozzi added. “He joined me in bed, just put his head on my shoulder for a little bit, and left.
Here’s a 3-minute video about Coal and his adoptive father:
Here’s a photo I took of the Parliament Hill cat condos in 2007 when I was visiting my friend Barb Best (hi, Barb!), and below that my map of Ottawa which shows the “Cat Condos” by Parliament:
******************
Finally, from the New York Review of Books, here’s an article about “hot cats” from art editor Leanne Shapton (click below). I give an excerpt:
An excerpt:
Our thirty-fourth art newsletter comes via The New York Review’s editorial group chat, where some of our staffers have recently been posting photos of their pets in the summer heat. I love drawing cats, and I find a lethargic cat lying supine to be a beautiful thing. Herewith, please find a gallery of our beloved, overheated cats.
The rest of the newsletter describes what’s in the issue, but I couldn’t resist putting up two of Leanne Shapton’s drawings of hot cats. There are more at the site:
My own cat, Biscuit, is surviving the summer by sprawling on towels, eating fish skins, and recently enjoyed the Fourth of July fireworks tucked into the armpits of my daughter’s hoodie.
***************************
Lagniappe: From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:
Moar lagniappe:
Even MOR lagniappe:
h/t: Texas Linguist, Lianne