World Cat Day: The Most Famous Fluffy Quadrupeds in Art History

World cat day today, Thursday August 8, and every day for all of us who love these four-legged animals. So, to commemorate this day, we’ve rounded up ten of the most famous works of art by artists who loved cats and gave them starring roles in their paintings.

• Louis Wain, The Bachelor’s Party

Louis Wain was born in 1860 and is one of the most popular English painters of his generation. He became famous through his works depicting cats that stand out for their anthropomorphic appearance. The English writer HG Wells even said: “He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world.” There is a theory that Wain, who was mentally ill and possibly schizophrenic, acquired his obsession with cats because of his illness. However, Louis Wain was elected as the president of the National Cat Club, was involved in many animal charities and for about 30 years did not stop creating designs exclusively with cats, which are known to this day.

• Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, The Cat at Play

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip was born in Amsterdam to a family of painters. She became known for her paintings of domestic pets and especially cats. The nobility of the Victorian era, in fact, quickly singled out her paintings, which always had some emotional background, without metaphorical meanings, with the focus of attention on the cats themselves. She was inspired by her own cats, whose behavior she studied avidly. It is also worth mentioning that she built a perfectly built studio with a glass front, in which her cats could roam freely, sleep and of course deal with typical “cat problems” as only they know how.

• Franz Marc, The White Cat

Franz Marc became known for his highly colored images of horses, dogs and of course cats. His works, which show us animals in their natural state (sleeping or grooming) were presented for the first time in 1911-1912 in Munich. For him animals were the ideal symbol of purity, truth and beauty. Another thing that makes his works unique is the way he saw colors through the symbolic character he gave them – blue meant spirituality and masculinity, yellow happiness and red represented violence.

• Bart van der Leck, The Cat

Bart van der Leck is mainly known for the magazine De Stijl, which he co-founded. However, his interest in painting and architecture greatly contributed to his lifestyle, resulting in 1916 using the technique of radical abstraction in his works, based on the colors red, yellow and blue. During his visit to Paris, it was the classical Egyptian art in the Louvre that impressed him and later inspired him to develop a style of highly simplified patterns and colors. So in his work The Cat, he chose only black, white, red and orange colors to depict the cat in various angles.

• Hiroshige II, A White Cat Playing with a String

This painting was designed by Hiroshige II, who studied and closely followed the style of Hiroshige’s successful mentor, after whom he was named. The work shows us how closely the artist observed his cat, depicting it in a minimal yet bold way. In particular, we see the white cat biting a blue string with its hind legs resting on the ground, ready to “rush”. Those who have a cat as a pet know perfectly well!

Read more at monopoli.gr