Famous cat paintings: 15 masterworks for cat lovers
Cats took longer than dogs to win over painters. When they did, they stole the show: kittens on writing desks, a cat in a girl's arms, and forty-two Persians in one famous room.
For most of art history the cat was a minor character: a thief in a kitchen scene, a symbol of laziness or desire in a corner of a Dutch interior. It took until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for painters to look at cats the way their owners did, and then a whole school of cat painters appeared almost overnight.
Here are fifteen of the most famous cat paintings, from Gainsborough's sleepy boy to the most expensive cat picture ever sold. Each is restored from its museum scan and can be printed or sent as a card.
From kitchen thief to companion
Early cats in painting are usually up to no good: stealing fish, chasing mice, standing in for vanity or desire. Gainsborough's late fancy pictures, made in the last years of his life, are among the first to show a child and a cat simply belonging to each other.
1. A Boy with a Cat—Morning
Thomas Gainsborough, A Boy with a Cat—Morning, 1787. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
One of Gainsborough's last pictures, painted the year before he died. A ragged boy holds a cat in the half-dark of early morning, and neither of them seems quite awake. It has the same soft, dreamy light as his best portraits.
2. Cat with Kittens
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, Cat with Kittens, 1844. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip painted this at twenty-three. She would spend the next sixty years painting cats and become the most famous cat painter of the century, and she is said to have kept a glass-sided pen in her studio so she could watch kittens play without them escaping. Here the mother keeps one calm eye on us while the kittens tumble.
3. Cats on a Console
Charles Monginot, Cats on a Console, 1859. Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris.
Monginot set up a grand still life of fruit, silver and seafood, then let the kittens in. One laps at spilt milk, another has fallen into the silver, and the whole careful arrangement is collapsing. Anyone who has left a cat alone in a dining room will know exactly what happened next.
4. Woman with a Cat
Gustave Courbet, Woman with a Cat, 1864. Worcester Art Museum.
Courbet is famous for painting the world as it is, and his cat is a real, heavy, sleepy animal pressed against a young woman's shoulder. The white of the fur and the white of her frills melt into each other, so it is hard to see where she ends and the cat begins.
5. An Old Woman with Cat
Max Liebermann, An Old Woman with Cat, 1878. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Liebermann painted an old woman in the sun against a brick wall, a black cat asleep in her lap. Nothing happens, and that is the point. It is one of the gentlest pictures of companionship in nineteenth-century art.
6. Cat Hunting Birds
Bruno Liljefors, Cat Hunting Birds, 1883. Gothenburg Museum of Art.
The Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors spent his life watching animals in the wild, and he painted the cat as it really is: a hunter. A black and white cat trots out of long grass with its catch. There is nothing cosy about it, and it is wonderful.
The cat comes indoors
By the 1880s the cat had moved from the kitchen to the drawing room. Impressionists painted their friends' children with family cats, and specialist cat painters sold kittens by the hundred to a public that could not get enough of them.
7. Julie Manet with Cat
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Julie Manet, 1887. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Julie was the eight-year-old daughter of the painter Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet, Édouard Manet's brother. Renoir painted her with her cat purring in her lap, eyes closed in perfect contentment. Julie grew up to keep a celebrated diary of artistic Paris in the 1890s.
8. Curiosity
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, Curiosity, 1889.
A white kitten has spotted a fly. Ronner-Knip catches the moment before the pounce: ears forward, one paw lifted, every hair alert. By now she was painting for collectors across Europe, and she could do a kitten's fur better than anyone alive.
9. Cat and Dog
Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Cat and Dog, 1890.
The Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela set his standoff in deep snow: a dog on the bank, a cat in the ditch below, both frozen in place. Who will move first? The empty white space between them does all the work.
10. Girl with a White Shawl and a Cat
Charles Joshua Chaplin, Girl with a White Shawl and a Cat, 1891.
Chaplin was a fashionable Paris painter of pretty young women in pale silks. Here the cat is the girl's companion and partner in the pose, its striped head tucked under her chin. The soft whites and pinks are typical of him, and so is the gentle, direct look.
The cat craze
In the 1890s cats became a fashion. Cat shows began, Persian and Angora breeds were prized, and wealthy owners commissioned pictures of entire households of cats. Kahler's huge canvas is the high point of that craze.
11. My Wife's Lovers
Carl Kahler, My Wife's Lovers, 1891–1893.
The San Francisco millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson owned some 350 cats, and in 1891 she asked the Austrian painter Carl Kahler to paint her favourites. He spent about three years on it. The result shows forty-two cats and is often called the largest cat painting ever made; the title is said to be her husband's joke. In 2015 it sold at Sotheby's in New York for $826,000.
12. Head of a White Angora Kitten
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, Head of a White Angora Kitten, 1892.
Just a face, filling the canvas. Ronner-Knip treated her kittens the way a society painter treated a duchess, and this little Angora gets a portrait all of its own. The pale green eyes are the only colour in a cloud of white.
13. Three Kittens Playing with a Letter Box
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, Three Kittens Playing with a Letter Box, 1894.
Three kittens have found a letter box and a length of blue ribbon, which is all they need. Ronner-Knip's kittens were so popular that they were printed on cards and calendars across Europe. This one could have been made for a greeting card, and it still works as one.
14. Kittens at Play
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, Kittens at Play, 1897.
Painted when she was seventy-six, and every bit as lively as the picture she made at twenty-three. A mother cat watches from the chair, kittens climb the upholstery, and a vase on the shelf looks dangerously close to the edge.
15. Three Black Cats
Carl Kahler, Three Black Cats, late 19th century.
Kahler again, this time with three black Persians posed like a family portrait against crimson velvet. Their golden eyes are the brightest things in the room. Black cats were long feared as bad luck; here they look like aristocrats.
Common questions
What is the most famous cat painting?
Carl Kahler's My Wife's Lovers, painted between 1891 and 1893, is the most famous and the most valuable: it sold for $826,000 at Sotheby's in 2015. Renoir's portrait of Julie Manet with her cat is the best-loved cat picture by an Impressionist.
Who was the most famous painter of cats?
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, a Dutch-Belgian painter who worked for over sixty years and made cats her life's subject. Louis Wain, who drew cats for British magazines and cards, was the most famous cat illustrator.
Why did people paint cats?
For centuries cats appeared as symbols, of laziness, desire or domestic life. In the nineteenth century, as cats became cherished pets and cat shows began, owners wanted portraits of them just as they did of dogs and horses.
Can I send a cat painting as a Christmas card?
Yes. Any painting here can open a card in Fable Cards, printed with your own words inside.
Every painting here is restored from its museum scan and printed to order. For the dogs that Landseer, Gainsborough and Sargent painted, read our companion story, Famous dog paintings. And if a cat in your life deserves a card of its own, start one in Fable Cards.