Concerning Cats
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Helen M. Winslow >> Concerning Cats
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"'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dy'd
The azure flowers that blow:
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below."
Wordsworth's "Kitten and the Falling Leaves," is in the high, moralizing
style.
"That way look, my Infant, lo!
What a pretty baby show.
See the kitten on the wall,
Sporting with the leaves that fall,
* * * * *
"But the kitten, how she starts,
Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts
First at one and then its fellow,
Just as light and just as yellow:
There are many now--now one,
Now they stop, and there are none.
What intentness of desire
In her upward eye of fire!
With a tiger-leap halfway
Now she meets the coming prey,
Lets it go as fast, and then
Has it in her power again:
Now she works with three or four.
Like an Indian conjuror:
Quick as he in feats of art,
Far beyond in joy of heart.
Were her antics played in the eye
Of a thousand standers-by,
Clapping hands with shout and stare,
What would little Tabby care
For the plaudits of the crowd?
Over happy to be proud,
Over wealthy in the treasure
Of her own exceeding pleasure.
* * * * *
"Pleased by any random toy:
By a kitten's busy joy,
Or an infant's laughing eye
Sharing in the ecstacy:
I would fain like that or this
Find my wisdom in my bliss:
Keep the sprightly soul awake,
And have faculties to take,
Even from things by sorrow wrought,
Matter for a jocund thought,
Spite of care and spite of grief,
To gambol with life's falling leaf."
Cowper's love for animals was well known. At one time, according to Lady
Hesketh, he had besides two dogs, two goldfinches, and two canaries,
five rabbits, three hares, two guinea-pigs, a squirrel, a magpie, a jay,
and a starling. In addition he had, at least, one cat, for Lady Hesketh
says, "One evening the cat giving one of the hares a sound box on the
ear, the hare ran after her, and having caught her, punished her by
drumming on her back with her two feet hard as drumsticks, till the
creature would actually have been killed had not Mrs. Unwin rescued
her." It might have been this very cat that was the inspiration of
Cowper's poem, "To a Retired Cat," which had as a moral the familiar
stanza:--
"Beware of too sublime a sense
Of your own worth and consequence:
The man who dreams himself so great
And his importance of such weight,
That all around, in all that's done,
Must move and act for him alone,
Will learn in school of tribulation
The folly of his expectation."
Baudelaire wrote:--
"Come, beauty, rest upon my loving heart,
But cease thy paws' sharp-nailed play,
And let me peer into those eyes that dart
Mixed agate and metallic ray."
* * * * *
"Grave scholars and mad lovers all admire
And love, and each alike, at his full tide
Those suave and puissant cats, the fireside's pride,
Who like the sedentary life and glow of fire."
Goldsmith also wrote of the kitten:--
"Around in sympathetic mirth
Its tricks the kitten tries:
The cricket chirrups in the hearth,
The crackling fagot flies."
Does this not suggest a charming glimpse of the poet's English home?
Keats was evidently not acquainted with the best and sleekest pet cat,
and his "Sonnet to a Cat" does not indicate that he fully appreciated
their higher qualities.
Mr. Whittier, our good Quaker poet, while not attempting an elaborate
sonnet or stilted elegiac, shows a most appreciative spirit in the lines
he wrote for a little girl who asked him one day, with tears in her
eyes, to write an epitaph for her lost Bathsheba.
"Bathsheba: To whom none ever said scat,
No worthier cat
Ever sat on a mat
Or caught a rat:
_Requies-cat_."
Clinton Scollard, however, has given us an epitaph that many
sympathizing admirers would gladly inscribe on the tombstones of their
lost pets, if it were only the popular fashion to put tombstones over
their graves. This is Mr. Scollard's tribute, the best ever written:--
GRIMALKIN
AN ELEGY ON PETER, AGED TWELVE
In vain the kindly call: in vain
The plate for which thou once wast fain
At morn and noon and daylight's wane,
O King of mousers.
No more I hear thee purr and purr
As in the frolic days that were,
When thou didst rub thy velvet fur
Against my trousers.
How empty are the places where
Thou erst wert frankly debonair,
Nor dreamed a dream of feline care,
A capering kitten.
The sunny haunts where, grown a cat,
You pondered this, considered that,
The cushioned chair, the rug, the mat,
By firelight smitten.
Although of few thou stoodst in dread,
How well thou knew a friendly tread,
And what upon thy back and head
The stroking hand meant.
A passing scent could keenly wake
Thy eagerness for chop or steak,
Yet, Puss, how rarely didst thou break
The eighth commandment.
Though brief thy life, a little span
Of days compared with that of man,
The time allotted to thee ran
In smoother metre.
Now with the warm earth o'er thy breast,
O wisest of thy kind and best,
Forever mayst thou softly rest,
_In pace_, Peter.
One only has to read this poem to feel that Mr. Scollard knew what it is
to love a gentle, intelligent, affectionate cat--made so by kind
treatment.
To Francois Coppee the cat is as sacred as it was to the Egyptians of
old. The society of his feline pets is to him ever delightful and
consoling, and it may have inspired him to write some of his most
melodious verses. Nevertheless he is not the cat's poet. It was Charles
Cros who wrote:--
"Chatte blanche, chatte sans tache,
Je te demande dans ces vers
Quel secret dort dans tes yeux verts,
Quel sarcasme sous ta moustache?"
Here is a version in verse of the famous "Kilkenny Cats":--
"O'Flynn, she was an Irishman, as very well was known,
And she lived down in Kilkenny, and she lived there all alone,
With only six great large tom-cats that knowed their ways about;
And everybody else besides she scrupulously shut out."
"Oh, very fond of cats was she, and whiskey, too, 'tis said,
She didn't feed 'em very much, but she combed 'em well instead:
As may be guessed, these large tom-cats did not get very sleek
Upon a combing once a day and a 'haporth' once a week.
"Now, on one dreary winter's night O'Flynn she went to bed
With a whiskey bottle under her arm, the whiskey in her head.
The six great large tom-cats they all sat in a dismal row,
And horridly glared their hazy eyes, their tails wagged to and fro.
"At last one grim graymalkin spoke, in accents dire to tell,
And dreadful were the words which in his horrid whisper fell:
And all the six large tom-cats in answer loud did squall,
'Let's kill her, and let's eat her, body, bones, and all.'
"Oh, horrible! Oh, terrible! Oh, deadly tale to tell!
When the sun shone through the window-hole all seemed still and well:
The cats they sat and licked their paws all in a merry ring.
But nothing else in all the house looked like a living thing.
"Anon they quarrelled savagely--they spit, they swore, they hollered:
At last these six great large tom-cats they one another swallered:
And naught but one long tail was left in that once peaceful dwelling,
And a very tough one, too, it was--it's the same that I've been telling."
By far more artistic is the version for which I am indebted to Miss
Katharine Eleanor Conway, herself a poet of high order and a lover of
cats.
THE KILKENNY CATS
There wanst was two cats in Kilkenny,
Aitch thought there was one cat too many;
So they quarrelled and fit,
They scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails,
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there wasn't any.
This version comes from Ireland, and is doubtless the correct original.
"Note," says Miss Conway, "the more than Greek delicacy with which the
tragedy is told. No mutilation, no gore; just an effacement--prompt and
absolute--'there wasn't any.' It would be hard to overpraise that fine
touch."
CHAPTER X
CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS
While thousands of artists, first and last, have undertaken to paint
cats, there are but few who have been able to do them justice. Artists
who have possessed the technical skill requisite to such delicate work
have rarely been willing to give to what they have regarded as
unimportant subjects the necessary study; and those who have been
willing to study cats seriously have possessed but seldom the skill
requisite to paint them well.
Thomas Janvier, whose judgment on such matters is unquestioned, declares
that not a dozen have succeeded in painting thoroughly good cat
portraits, portraits so true to nature as to satisfy--if they could
express their feelings in the premises--the cat subjects and their cat
friends. Only four painters, he says, ever painted cats habitually and
always well.
Two members of this small but highly distinguished company flourished
about a century ago in widely separated parts of the world, and without
either of them knowing that the other existed.
One was a Japanese artist, named Ho-Kou-Say, whose method of painting,
of course, was quite unlike that to which we are accustomed in this
western part of the world, but who had a wonderful faculty for making
his queer little cat figures seem intensely alive.
The other was a Swiss artist, named Gottfried Mind, whose cat pictures
are so perfect in their way that he came to be honorably known as "the
Cat Raphael."
The other two members of the cat quartet are the French artist, Monsieur
Louis Eugene Lambert, whose pictures are almost as well known in this
country as they are in France; and the Dutch artist, Madame Henriette
Ronner, whose delightful cat pictures are known even better, as she
catches the softer and sweeter graces of the cat more truly than
Lambert.
A thoroughly good picture of a cat is hard to paint, from a technical
standpoint, because the artist must represent not only the soft surface
of fur, but the underlying hard lines of muscle: and his studies must be
made under conditions of cat perversity which are at times quite enough
to drive him wild. If he is to represent the cat in repose, he must wait
for her to take that position of her own accord; and then, just as his
sketch is well under way, she is liable to rise, stretch herself, and
walk off. If his picture is to represent action, he must wait for the
cat to do what he wants her to do, and that many times before he can be
quite sure that his drawing is correct. With these severe limitations
upon cat painting, it is not surprising that very few good pictures of
cats have been painted.
Gottfried Mind has left innumerable pen sketches to prove his intimate
knowledge of the beauty and charm of the cat. He was born at Berne in
1768. He had a special taste for drawing animals even when very young,
bears and cats being his favorite subjects. As he grew older he obtained
a wonderful proficiency, and his cat pictures appeared with every
variety of expression. Their silky coats, their graceful attitudes,
their firm shape beneath the undulating fur, were treated so as to make
Mind's cats seem alive.
It was Madame Lebrun who named him the "Raphael of Cats," and many a
royal personage bought his pictures. He, like most cat painters, kept
his cats constantly with him, knowing that only by persistent and never
tiring study could he ever hope to master their infinite variety. His
favorite mother cat kept closely at his side when he worked, or perhaps
in his lap; while her kittens ran over him as fearlessly as they played
with their mother's tail. When a terrible epidemic broke out among the
cats of Berne in 1809, he hid his Minette safely from the police, but he
never quite recovered from the horror of the massacre of the eight
hundred that had to be sacrificed for the general safety of the people.
He died in 1814, and in poverty, although a few years afterward his
pictures brought extravagant prices.
Burbank, the English painter, has done some good things in cat pictures.
The expression of the face and the peculiar light in the cat's eye made
up the realism of Burbank's pictures, which were reproductions of sleek
and handsome drawing-room pets, whose shining coats he brings out with
remarkable precision.
The ill-fated Swiss artist Cornelius Wisscher's marvellous tom-cat has
become typical.
Delacroix, the painter of tigers, was a man of highly nervous
temperament, but his cat sketches bring out too strongly the tigerish
element to be altogether successful.
Louis Eugene Lambert was a pupil of Delacroix. He was born in Paris,
September 25, 1825, and the chief event of his youth was, perhaps, the
great friendship which existed between him and Maurice Sands. Entomology
was a fad with him for a time, but he finally took up his serious
life-work in 1854, when he began illustrating for the _Journal of
Agriculture_. In connection with his work, he began to study animals
carefully, making dogs his specialty. In 1862 he illustrated an edition
of La Fontaine, and in 1865 he obtained his first medal for a painting
of dogs. In 1866 his painting of cats, "L'Horloge qui avance," won
another medal, and brought his first fame as a cat painter. In 1874 he
was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. His "Envoi" in 1874, "Les
Chats du Cardinal," and "Grandeur Decline" brought more medals. Although
he has painted hosts of excellent dog pictures, cats are his favorites,
on account, as he says, of "les formes fines et gracieux; mouvements,
souple et subtil."
In the Luxembourg Gallery, Mr. Lambert's "Family of Cats" is considered
one of the finest cat pictures in the world. In this painting the mother
sits upon a table watching the antics of her four frivolous kittens.
There is a wonderful smoothness of touch and refinement of treatment
that have never yet been excelled. "After the Banquet" is another
excellent example of the same smoothness of execution, with fulness of
action instead of repose. And yet there is an undeniable lack of the
softer attributes which should be evident in the faces of the group.
It is here that Madame Ronner excels all other cat painters, living or
dead. She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little
figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable
as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done.
Asleep or awake, her cats look exactly to the "felinarian" like cats
with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity, drowsiness, indifference,
alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, fear,
confidence, mischief, earnestness, dignity, helplessness,--they are all
in Madame Ronner's cats' faces, just as we see them in our own cats.
Madame Ronner is the daughter of Josephus Augustus Knip, a landscape
painter of some celebrity sixty years ago, and from her father she
received her first art education. She is now over seventy years old, and
for nearly fifty years has made her home in Brussels. There, she and her
happy cats, a big black Newfoundland dog named Priam, with a pert
cockatoo named Coco, dwell together in a roomy house in its own grounds,
back a little from the Charleroi Road. Madame Ronner has a good son to
care for her, and she loves the animals, who are both her servants and
her friends. Every day she spends three good hours of the morning in her
studio, painting her delightful cat pictures with the energy of a young
artist and the expert precision which we know so well. She was sixteen
when she succeeded in painting a picture which was accepted and sold at
a public exhibition at Dusseldorf. This was a study of a cat seated in a
window and examining with great curiosity a bumblebee; while it would
not compare with her later work, there must have been good quality in
it, or it would not have got into a Dusseldorf picture exhibition at
all. At any rate, it was the beginning of her successful career as an
artist. From that time she managed to support herself and her father by
painting pictures of animals. For many years, however, she confined
herself to painting dogs. Her most famous picture, "The Friend of Man,"
belongs to this period--a pathetic group composed of a sorrowing old
sand-seller looking down upon a dying dog still harnessed to the little
sand-wagon, with the two other dogs standing by with wistful looks of
sympathy. When this picture was exhibited, in 1860, Madame Ronner's fame
was established permanently.
But it so happened that in the same year a friendly kitten came to live
in her home, wandering in through the open doorway from no one knew
where, and deciding, after sniffing about the place in cat fashion, to
remain there for the remainder of its days. And it also happened that
Madame Ronner was lured by this small stranger, who so coolly quartered
himself upon her, to change the whole current of her artistic life, and
to paint cats instead of dogs. Of course, this change could not be made
in a moment; but after that the pictures which she painted to please
herself were cat pictures, and as these were exhibited and her
reputation as a cat painter became established, cat orders took the
place of dog orders more and more, until at last her time was given
wholly to cat painting. Her success in painting cat action has been due
as much to her tireless patience as to her skill; a patience that gave
her strength to spend hours upon hours in carefully watching the quick
movements of the lithe little creatures, and in correcting again and
again her rapidly made sketches.
Every cat-lover knows that a cat cannot be induced, either by reason or
by affection, to act in accordance with any wishes save its own. Also
that cats find malicious amusement in doing what they know they are not
wanted to do, and that with an affectation of innocence that materially
aggravates their deliberate offence.
But Madame Ronner, through her long experience, has evolved a way to get
them to pose as models. Her plan is the simple one of keeping her models
prisoners in a glass box, enclosed in a wire cage, while she is painting
them. Inside the prison she cannot always command their actions, but her
knowledge of cat character enables her to a certain extent to persuade
them to take the pose which she requires. By placing a comfortable
cushion in the cage she can tempt her model to lie down; some object of
great interest, like a live mouse, for instance, exhibited just outside
the cage is sure to create the eager look that she has shown so well on
cat faces; and to induce her kittens to indulge in the leaps and bounds
which she has succeeded so wonderfully in transferring to canvas, she
keeps hanging from the top of the cage a most seductive "bob."
Madame Ronner's favorite models are "Jem" and "Monmouth," cats of rare
sweetness of temper, whose conduct in all relations of life is above
reproach. The name of "Monmouth," as many will recall, was made famous
by the hero of Monsieur La Bedolierre's classic, "Mother Michel and her
Cat," [Footnote: Translated into English by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.] and
therefore has clustering about it traditions so glorious that its wearers
in modern times must be upheld always by lofty hopes and high resolves.
Doubtless Monmouth Ronner feels the responsibility entailed upon him by
his name.
In the European galleries are several noted paintings in which the cat
appears more or less unsuccessfully. Breughel and Teniers made their
grotesque "Cat Concerts" famous, but one can scarcely see why, since the
drawing is poor and there is no real insight into cat character evident.
The sleeping cat, in Breughel's "Paradise Lost" in the Louvre, is
better, being well drawn, but so small as to leave no chance for
expression. Lebrun's "Sleep of the Infant Jesus," in the Louvre, has a
slumbering cat under the stove, and in Barocci's "La Madonna del Gatto"
the cat is the centre of interest. Holman Hunt's "The Awakening
Conscience" and Murillo's Holy Family "del Pajarito" give the cat as a
type of cruelty, but have failed egregiously in accuracy of form or
expression. Paul Veronese's cat in "The Marriage at Cana" is fearfully
and wonderfully made, and even Rembrandt failed when he tried to
introduce a cat into his pictures.
Rosa Bonheur has been wise enough not to attempt cat pictures, knowing
that special study, for which she had not the time or the inclination,
is necessary to fit an artist to excel with the feline character.
Landseer, too, after trying twice, once in 1819 with "The Cat Disturbed"
and once in 1824 with "The Cat's Paw," gave up all attempts at dealing
with Grimalkin. Indeed, most artists who have attempted it, have found
that to be a wholly successful cat artist such whole-hearted devotion to
the subject as Madame Ronner's is the invariable price of distinction.
Of late, however, more artists are found who are willing to pay this
price, who are giving time and study not only to the subtle shadings of
the delicate fur, but to the varying facial expression and sinuous
movements of the cat. Margaret Stocks, of Munich, for example, is
rapidly coming to the front as a cat painter, and some predict for her
(she is still a young woman) a future equal to Madame Ronner's. Gambier
Bolton's "Day Dreams" shows admirably the quality and "tumbled-ness" of
an Angora kitten's fur, while the expression and drawing are equally
good. Miss Cecilia Beaux's "Brighton Cats" is famous, and every student
of cats recognizes its truthfulness at once.
Angora and Persian kittens find another loving and faithful student in
J. Adam, whose paintings have been photographed and reproduced in this
country times without number. "Puss in Boots" is another foreign picture
which has been photographed and sold extensively in this country.
"Little Milksop" by the same artist, Mr. Frank Paton, gives fairly
faithful drawing and expression of two kittens who have broken a milk
pitcher and are eagerly lapping up the contents.
In the Munich Gallery there is a painting by Claus Meyer, "Bose Zungen,"
which has become quite noted. His three old cats and three young cats
show three gossiping old crones by the side of whom are three small and
awkward kittens.
Of course, there are no artists whose painting of the cat is to be
compared with Madame Ronner's. Mr. J.L. Dolph, of New York City, has
painted hundreds of cat pieces which have found a ready sale, and Mr.
Sid L. Brackett, of Boston, is doing very creditable work. A successful
cat painter of the younger school is Mr. N.N. Bickford, of New York,
whose "Peek-a-Boo" hangs in a Chicago gallery side by side with cats of
Madame Ronner and Monsieur Lambert. "Miss Kitty's Birthday" shows that
he has genuine understanding of cat character, and is mastering the
subtleties of long white fur.
Mr. Bickford is a pupil of Jules Lefebvre Boulanger and Miralles. It was
by chance that he became a painter of cats. Mademoiselle Marie Engle,
the prima-donna, owned a beautiful white Angora cat which she prized
very highly, and as her engagements abroad compelled her to part with
the cat for a short time, she left Mizzi with the artist until her
return. One day Mr. Bickford thought he would try painting the white,
silken fur of Mizzi: the result not only surprised him but also his
artist friends, who said, "Lambert himself could not have done better."
Upon Miss Engle's return, seeing what an inspiration her cat had been,
she gave her to Mr. Bickford, and it is needless to add that he has
become deeply attached to his beautiful model. Mizzi is a pure white
Angora, with beautiful blue eyes, and silky fur. She won first prize at
the National Cat Show of 1895, but no longer attends cat shows, on
account of her engagements as professional model.
Ben Austrian, who has made a success in painting other animals, has done
a cat picture of considerable merit. The subject was Tix, a beautiful
tiger-gray, belonging to Mr. Mahlon W. Newton, of Philadelphia. The cat
is noted, not only in Philadelphia, but among travelling men, as he
resides at a hotel, and is quite a prominent member of the office force.
He weighs fifteen pounds and is of a very affectionate nature, following
his master to the park and about the establishment like a dog. During
the day he lives in the office, lying on the counter or the key-rack,
but at night he retires with his master at eleven or twelve o'clock,
sleeping in his own basket in the bathroom, and waking his master
promptly at seven every morning. Tix's picture hangs in the office of
his hotel, and is becoming as famous as the cat.
Elizabeth Bonsall is a young American artist who has exhibited some good
cat pictures, and whose work promises to make her famous some day, if
she does not "weary in well-doing"; and Mr. Jean Paul Selinger's
"Kittens" are quite well known.
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