Cat Portraiture

During the 19th century, the Swiss-born artist  Gottfried Mind(1768-1814) produced many carefully observed watercolors and skillfully executed pen  studies of his cat Minette and her kittens.

The works of Dutch-born Henrietta Ronner (1821-1909) were thought sentimental at the time, but are highly prized today for their accurate observation of cat behavior, while the Swiss - born artist Theophile Steinlen (1859 - 1923) produced thousands of drawings of cats that, although intended as comic strips, brilliantly caught  cat behavior. 

Oher European painters were using cats to symbolize the sexuality of their subjects. For example, Edouard Manet (1832-1883) put a self-contained and serene cat at his subject's foot in his painting Olympia, perhaps as a subtle code for sensuousness, a technique used in portraits of geishas in Japan.

Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was far more robust in his affinity with cats.
 
In many of his paintings, such as Madame Julie Manet, Girl with a Cat, and Sleeping Girl with Cat, his cats are playful, spirited, and sensual, much like the women he portrays.

In Russia, the poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) drew subtle pencil sketches of his cats, and these can now be seen at Boldino, his house near Pskov.