posada's fat cat dances

www.metmuseum.org Gift of Roberto Berdecio, 1960 (PD)

For Cinco de Mayo I'm bringing you this sprightly wood-engraved scene by Jose Guadalupe Posada.  Here in Mujer bailando con gato (Woman Dancing with a Cat, c. 1900) a dancer steps out in her fine fringed shawl, surrounded by her similarly decked friends.  But why's the cat in a tailcoat?  After doing a little reading on Posada (like here), I think this is his way of lampooning a personage, a fat cat.  You have to admit that cat isn't skinny, and the fancy coat has long been shorthand for identifying bankers, politicos and other possibly-corruptible callings.  Is this poking fun at an official playing at being "man of the people"?  

happy birthday paul klee

Today's Google doodle honors Paul Klee.  Longtime readers know that I have a great deal of affection for Klee, not just as an artist but as a person, not least for his deep affection for cats.  Because many of the works I would love to show you are still under copyright, and everyone else has posted "Cat and Bird," I'll give you some links instead:
The adorable Tomcat's Turf
A Pride of Lions (Why not?)
A Kind of Cat
Cat Staring at the Moon

Do read his Diaries if you ever have the chance.  They are so curious, full of wonder, and also full of references to the family cats.

dog. just dog

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,
Gift of Miss Emily Sargent and Mrs. Francis Ormond in memory of their brother, John Singer Sargent.
 © President and Fellows of Harvard College

All of 3 9/16" x 5", this pencil sketch by John Singer Sargent found its way to his sisters Violet and Emily upon his death in 1925. They gave it to the Fogg Art Museum in 1931.  My favorite part of this drawing?  The eyes. Two little heavy presses of the pencil, and you've got a perfect look at that particular weariness only a dog shows in his sleep.  Cats?  Total absence of care as they nap.  Some dogs though always look like they're guarding their universe still in their dreams.

"the manx cat"

thanks british library flickr

From a slim volume of verse privately printed in 1910:
(You know what's coming, right?  Bad poetry!)

THE MANX CAT

by Marjorie Dyrenforth

Poor tailless pussy cat! if I
Were only very rich,
The very first thing I would buy
Would be for you a switch;
And where your tail should grow, I'd try
The little switch to hitch — oh, my!
But what a pretty pussy cat
You'd be if I could just do that!

-- Dyrenforth, Marjorie. Verses. Chicago, 1910. p. 59.

victoria the post office cat

Washington D.C., 1919:  a young Italian strikes a blow for equality as a single mother and immigrant in the employ of the US Postal Service.  Victor Emmanuel, a tortoiseshell left behind by a foreign official, was adopted by the city post office as a staff mouser, only to surprise her employer with the value-added gift of four kittens and a fast rethink on gender.

-- Angell, George T. (George Thorndike), 1823-1909, and Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Our Dumb Animals. [Boston]: Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, v. 52 no. 2 (July 1919), p. 27.

unusual modern dog fables

From a 1924 book of modern and frankly odd fables:

The Druggist, the Little Girl and Her Dog
A self-recording scale stood on the sidewalk in front of a drug store. A Woman, accompanied by her little Girl and her Dog, approached the scale. The Dog jumping on the platform, the Mother of the Girl said: "Get off, Jack; this is not for you," while the Girl, seeing the weight recorded, called out, "Forty pounds!" The Druggist standing in the doorway of the store, hearing the command of the Girl's mother, remarked, "I am willing that my scale be used by all that are my friends, the lowly as well as the high." "I am glad to hear you say that," said the Girl. "My Dog is low, but he looks up friendly to everybody."

The Dog at the Window and the Girl
A Dog was looking out of a window opening on a street, when a little Girl standing on the opposite side observed him. The Dog was motionless and the Girl was uncertain whether he was alive, or whether what she saw was the stuffed figure of the animal. So she crossed the street, and approaching the Dog smiling, he extended his head so that she could pat it.
(Moral:) To make a friend one has to approach his heart.
-- Sonntag, Lincoln. Up-to-date Animal And Other Fables. [Tarrytown, N.Y.], 1924. pp. 16, 65

top hat

Takeuchi Seihō [Public domain in Japan], via Wikimedia Commons

Are you looking for a hat or a house, little fellow?  We've seen nihonga painter Takeuchi Seiho at the Museum before, but this 1937 "Mouse and Top Hat" is a perfect snapshot of Seiho's use of Western realism in an unmistakably Japanese way. 

vintage wordless wednesday

from the museum's collection

sitting cat, 1918

• Gift of G.A. de Graag (PD)  http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.205698
• https://www.rijksmuseum.nl

Here is another wonderful Julie deGraag, for no reason other than I love it and want you to love it too.  Look at those shoulder stripes!

the turtle akbar

• Gift of G.A. de Graag www.rijkmuseum.nl

Before I do anything else, let me offer you the link to this piece over at the Rijksmuseum, so you can really see and enjoy it.  This is a print (woodcut) by Dutch artist Julie de Graag (1877-1924), immortalizing turtle Akbar, dog Max, and cat...uh, Puss.  ("Poes" in Dutch.)  There is very little in English-language scholarship to date about de Graag, which is a pity, as her woodcuts of animals and nature are devastating in their skill and beauty.  Look:

• Gift of G.A. de Graag www.rijkmuseum.nl

Three Cats, 1916

• Gift of M. J.. de Graag www.rijkmuseum.nl

Ferns, 1920

I was able to find an entry on de Graag in the Dictionary of Women Artists (1997).  

who's watching whom?

Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. "Three cats watching fish in an aquarium" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1938. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b992a521-9c85-2498-e040-e00a18063ad7

This illustration by Clyde A. Copson is from a children's book called "A Day with Bum; and the Smart Little Fish," by Morris Wilson, published in 1938.  I can't find anything about Copson or Wilson, but the record for this piece at the New York Public Library notes that the book was created under a Works Progress Administration program for new reading materials.