In the apparent dichotomy of “dog people” and “cat people”, I’m in the latter camp.
Dogs can be nice enough, but they always seem a bit too eager to be what humans want them to be. Cats are to me more fascinating. Having a cat as a pet seems more like sharing your house with a wild animal that has decided you can be of some use to it and deigned to allow you to share its company.
Both, of course, have a long history of domestication, and both have been subjects for artists.
I also very much like women as subjects for art, and women seem particularly likely to be fond of cats.
A Flickr user who goes by the pseudonym “Huismus” has assembled a nicely varied and nicely chosen set of paintings that feature women and cats. (The selections are even more varied than my choices above might indicate.)
The set is also well annotated with the names of the artists and titles of the works. “Huismus” has a number of other Flickr sets devoted to art.
(Images above: Giovanni Boldini, Helene Allingham, Ivan Kramskoi, John Sloan, Marguerite Gérard, Edouard Manet, Phillip William Steer, Max Lieberman, Francesco Bacchiacca, Zinaida Serebriakova, John White Alexander)
[Via Making a Mark]
