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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Friday, March 28, 2014

finery for friday: black goes with everything

thanks wikimedia commons (PD:US)
Do you really want to go out?  You got all dressed up, and all those people are expecting you to show up and make chat and nibble politely on whatever without putting a foot wrong or getting anything stuck in your teeth.  How tiresome.  And how beautiful your black cat looks lolling against the fresh lettuce green of your dress.  Who would appreciate you more?
That's the sense of scene I get looking at The Green Dress (1890-99) by American artist John White Alexander.  A socially prominent portrait and decorative painter, Alexander painted elements of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name a few.  This on the other hand is a private and gentle figure study.  Those green folds are bright and crisp, especially playing off the soft dark fur of the cat.  A contented sigh of a canvas.

2 comments:

The Creative Cat said...

Lovely! I may need to get myself a lettuce-green dress and paint a self-portrait with my fine feline house panthers! Did you now Alexander is from Pittsburgh? We have several of his paintings in our museums here. I always thought he should be better known among Impressionists, but he was an American...

Katnip Lounge said...

Nothing so elegant as a little black (cat fur on a)dress!