Best Cat Paintings

Susan Herbert. Photo: courtesy of the artist/ Thames & Hudson

“The smallest feline is a masterpiece,” wrote Leonardo da Vinci, whose drawing Study of Cat Movements and Positions testifies to his admiration for the animal’s flexibility; Thomas Gainsborough‘s and Paul Gauguin‘s cat studies were very similar to da Vinci’s.

Cats have proliferated in art over the centuries. They became particularly popular as the cuddly familiars of females in paintings by Victorian artists and French Impressionists.

The cat painted by Edouard Manet in the lap of his eight-year-old niece Julie (the daughter of Berthe Morisot, herself a future artist) in 1887 may be the most content in art history. Less reassuring is the black cat—symbol of prostitution—perched on the end of the naked woman’s bed in Manet’s Olympia, which scandalized Paris when it was shown at the 1865 Salon.

As the art and literature scholar Bram Dijkstra has observed, cats and female sexuality became sinisterly symbiotic in a strain of misogynistic fin de siècle art prompted by male fears and inadequacies. The thinly veiled symbolism of paintings by Charles J. Chaplin, Franz von Lembach, Hans Makart, and others inferred that women are not only insatiable but prone to bestiality.

Hieronymous Bosch, The Temptation of St. Anthony (right panel) (circa 1501)

In the wilderness, a cat hisses at the woman who’s trying to tempt the hermit Anthony, father of monasticism, with her naked body. The fish symbolized Christianity, but the cat’s demonic ears render it ambiguous.

Théodule-Augustin Ribot, The Cook and the Cat (1860s).

Another fish, another hungry cat. The French realist Ribot made his name painting humble kitchen scenes, of which this is the most famous. Is the cook oblivious to his four-legged friend, or is he turning a blind eye?

Carl Olof Larsson, The Bridge (1912).

The focal point of the Swedish artist’s mysterious watercolor is the supple little cat, which peers, as does its mistress, at the male figure on the bridge. An invisible thread connects the cat’s black coat to the dark head of the man; one expects the cat to tug it, drawing the man’s attention to the woman who had, perhaps, sat down to paint the bridge in solitude.

Kees von Dongen, Woman With Cat (1908)

This painting by the Dutch Fauvist is distinguished by its juxtaposing of delicate colors, its serenity, and its wit. The position in which the woman tenderly holds the cat renders her almost androgynous. The bow-like curve of the cat’s tail, its long body, and the woman’s headpiece harmonizes all the elements.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Girl and Cat (1880–81).

Most of Renoir’s paintings featuring females and felines are supine, like those of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. This one is the most vital. Something in the flowers has made the cat rear, mildly alerting the girl to its erect posture. The balance between indifference and inquisitiveness is perfectly weighted.