a black cat, the glorious outdoors

courtesy wikipaintings.org, public domain

By 1902 the Russian painter Konstantin Korovin had established a thriving career.  He'd designed part of the Russian pavilion for the 1900 Paris World Fair, and been awarded the Legion of Honour; he'd joined the groundbreaking artistic group Mir Iskusstva (World of Art); and after decades of easel painting had moved to designing major theatre sets.  And yet sometime that year he found a while to work up this study of a pleasant room and the black cat that would probably like to get out of it.
I don't find that surprising.  Korovin was one of the leading Russian Impressionists, and as such would have loved to capture such moments as this:  look at the difference between the muted, grayish light of the comfortable interior, compared to the clear blue radiance outside the window.  He was a hard worker, it seems, and I wonder if he felt the same way the cat did:  I want to go outside.