the dog jackson by emily hackbart

image copyright and by kindest permission of the artist

I admit it, I seem to be on a watercolor kick this week, and here's my latest pleasure: the pet portraits created by Missouri artist Emily Hackbart.  Simple and clarified, her portraits are a distillation of cuteness and life force.  Jackson, above, is my pick to showcase, but I'd recommend you also check out...oh, how about Felix and Tabitha, or Delila? 
Here's Emily on her work and herself:
***
I'm Emily Hackbart, the owner and operator of The Paper Woodland. I LOVE drawing and painting more than anything, and love to share my work in hopes it will bring a smile to your face! :)
I grew up on a farm in Northern California and spent most of my time with my animal friends, playing with them and drawing them.
My style developed over time, I mostly did more realistic pencil sketches and pen and ink drawings when I was growing up. It wasn't until I went to college that I first tried watercolor. I took a beginning watercolor class and instantly fell in love! It quickly became my favorite medium.
I graduated from college with a BFA in Art, and promptly became a flight attendant, lol. I did a little art here and there for the next several years, but nothing serious. In the meantime I married an amazing man, and had two sweet babies. When I was on maternity leave with my second son, I decided I didn't want to go back to work as a full-time flight attendant, and so The Paper Woodland was born! It has been an amazing, wonderful journey, and besides my family, is my greatest passion in life!
I now live on a big farm in Missouri with my husband and three adorable little boys. Everyday is filled to the brim with animals and farming and little boys, but at night I love nothing more than to sit at my desk and draw and paint little illustrations that are inspired by the life I live.
It is a full, busy life, and I love every minute of it! ♥

***

Joyful words from a joyful creator.  Want a portrait done but you're not a dog or a cat?  You're in luck, human.  Check out The Paper Woodland.

grandmaster matouenpeluche

image copyright and by kindest permission of the artist

I do love to feature Samantha Battersby of matouenpeluche once in a while!  (Remember the last time?)  Here's Grandmaster Kitten, her tribute to Grandmaster Flash.  Read about it on her blog here.

the elegance of good grooming

Takeuchi Seihō [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A plain, everyday tabby cat comes to radiant life in this 1924 painting on silk by Takeuchi Seiho (Japanese, 1864-1942).  If you think you see a curious feel for Western form in this work, you do.  Seiho traveled to Europe in 1900 and studied there before returning to Japan, where he became a major early force in the nihonga style.  Nihonga, "Japanese-style paintings," are made using traditional materials - such as the silk upon which this piece was painted - and organic pigments.
A last word: I can't let you go without letting you see his 1901 Lion, apparently painted after a trip to the Dresden Zoo.

cat.

www.lacma.org, Gift of the Robert and Helen Kuhn Family Trust (M.2012.106.30)

Nanzan Koryo (Japanese, 1756-1839) was a monk about whom little is known.  In this scroll painting, titled only "Cat," he's brushed in a feline friend so organically that we could be forgiven for thinking the ink ran this way of its own accord.

and then the cat came in

thanks the-athenaeum.org. PD

But wait.  Here's Konrad Krzyzanowski and the family again in a 180-degree turnaround from the mood of the last portrait.  This is "The Artist's Wife with a Cat," (Portret zony z kotem) of 1912, and Mrs. K has about had it with something.  With posing?  With the dark evening? With Konrad himself? She's in white once more, but now she's folded up into herself twice, legs and arms crossed against the hard edges of the green sofa.  (Compare this to the chair's dissolving edge in the last portrait we saw.)  Lines have been drawn here, and not just to portray the furniture.
Meanwhile, the family cat sits there like a mischievous imp, as though it were all about him or her.  I want to say "her," probably because my black cat is female.  Confident and sassy, Kitty provides a tart strike of humor in this moody piece.

cat cuddle

found on pinterest. believed PD based on research

I don't approve of wearing fur, but I have to take into account that this work dates from 1915 when fur was very often worn.  In fact I think the fur stole is part of the underlying reason for this portrait of Michalina Krzyzanowska by her husband, Konrad Krzyzanowki (Polish, 1872-1922).  With the borrowed pelt draped round her, Michalina looks rather like a sleek plump cat herself.  Her equally sleek tabby with its gorgeously picked-out stripes nuzzles her as if she's a fellow feline; the whole image radiates comfort and affection, not least with the slight golden nimbus round Michalina's head.  Konrad met her when she was his student at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.  At the time this portrait was painted, they had left Warsaw to wait out WWI with her relatives in the Ukranian region of Volhynia.  I hope the wait was as peaceful as this image would indicate.

a minoan mew

the metropolitan museum of art; Bequest of Richard B. Seager, 1926

A gem of a kitty face:  this carnelian stamp once sealed letters for some tasteful Minoan sometime during 1900-1600 B.C.E.

a huge collection of contemporary cat art - and all he did was ask

Clive Barker sent a drawing of a demon-eared cat, with wide eyes and full lips - not scary, but playful.
Jonathan Richman sent a watercolor of a sweet grey kitty chilling on a street corner.
Roy DeForest sent a cat portrait collage.
Tony Menodoza sent a photo of Ernie.
...And R. Crumb - this is when I squealed out loud - wrote a letter with a detailed drawing of his cat Bernie.
What lucky duck got this and more?  Patrick Eddington, a high school art teacher in Utah.  He'd write any creative person who struck his fancy, writers and visual artists alike, and ask if they'd share a cat-themed work with him.  He called it the "Cat Project."
It worked.
Mr. Eddington passed away earlier this year, and his collection went up for auction.  Part of the proceeds are to benefit Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, as he always meant it to do.  I know you'll enjoy the randomness of what was on offer, and you must see the Crumb letter.

raminou parks it

thanks wikiart.org (PD)

1920, Paris: Suzanne Valadon decides to paint some luscious folds and rich colors, but how to set them off perfectly?  No worries.  As any cat knows, what better foil for fine textiles than fur?  You must agree with me that her trusty frequent model, Raminou the ginger cat, appears most assured that a cat's place is dead center.  Valadon (1865-1938) is generally associated with the French Post-Impressionsts, such as Toulouse-Lautrec; this movement in a nutshell rolled together what the artist wanted to see with what he or she felt about it.  So not so much about verisimilitude; here I believe it's more about the sheer fun of tackling these intricate drapings and jewelled colors, and another great excuse to take - make - a picture of the cat.

a landscape painter paints his pet cat

By Johann Benjamin Ehrenreich (1733 or 1739–1806) (Dr. Senckenbergische Stiftung) [PD], via Wikimedia Commons

fabricats

copyright and by kindest permission of the artist, all rights reserved

Don't these two look as soft as the real thing?  While mediums such as sculpture and photography do provide the opportunity to create exactitude in visual likenesses, I have a fondness for textile art. It's used in creating things that are a comfort to body and mind (here's a great example from a previous post).  Even when the art is purely decorative, the tactile response remains, which is a fancy way of saying "I want to pet that."  And I want to pet these two portraits commissioned from Sharon of Leicester, England.  At BoxRoomBazaar, her Etsy shop, Sharon offers not only many sweet animal works for anyone's delight, but a cheerful take on your own pet if you like.

wordless wednesday

with biggest thanks to candace and somairle

wordless wednesday

cats: always ready to help in the studio

Augusto Nicodemo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

1797, Italy:  Jakob Philipp Hackert takes time out of his busy and successful art career in order to get a portrait done.  When you do such a momentous thing, you must be sure to include your helpful assistant.  Yes, that little white one with the tiny (TINY!) paws.

wordless wednesday

cool cats on the wall

i took these!

Found on a wall in the 20's blocks on Alberta St. in Portland.  How about a better look at those kittens?  Okay, here you go.

a quiet moment: girl with a cat, 1545

Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1933. www.metmuseum.org

Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (Dutch, c 1504-1559) had an adventuresome life.  He became court painter to Margaret of Austria at about the age of 21; ten years later he accompanied her nephew Emperor Charles V to Tunis, where he created a portrait of the reinstated Tunisian king  Moulay Hassan.  After 1536 he settled in Brussels, and it must have been there that he took the quiet hours to etch and engrave this quiet and introspective "Girl with a Cat."  The cat has been caught mid-biscuit, if I know that particular paw curl (and I do - Eliz was making biscuits on my face this morning as I woke up and I've the claw mark on my nose to show for it).  Vermeyen had a master hand with human faces and anatomy, but I can tell he must not have worked with cats much.  This one has very tiny ears, and the front legs seem too stubby; but yet he did capture the hooded eyes and pursed whiskers of a relaxed feline.

"baba and billy"

thanks the-athenaeum.org. (PD:US)

1920: John McKirdy Duncan (Scottish; 1866-1945) paints his daughter Vivian (whom I'm thinking is Baba) and her distracted cat (whom I'm betting is Billy).  When I first saw this odd and enchanting portrait, I thought "Here's another Symbolist I haven't seen."  I was partially correct.  There's a PreRaphaelite feel to the color and careful delineation of the main figures, but as a whole his subject matter is placed under a style I had not even known about: Celtic Revival.  I don't see any overtly Celtic symbolism here, only a lively little girl with a sure hand for her equally lively cat.  Here's an interesting thing:  this child who so confidently manages her pet grew up to become a doctor.  Did Duncan see that confidence in her at this age?  He certainly saw the match of high spirits between his blonde child and her elegant dark pet.
Here's a slideshow of Duncan works on YouTube (I couldn't resist giving you the chance to see this).  And here is a roughly translated page which contains by far the most I have found on his life and work.

cat in the summer meadow

thanks the-athenaeum.org. PD: US

I have a soft spot for the cats of Swedish wildlife painter Bruno Liljefors (1860-1939).  Longtime readers of the Museum will know we've seen him before (remember Sleeping Jeppe?).  He's considered a primary influence on wildlife painting at the turn of the 20th century down to this day, and his style owes a fair amount to Impressionism.  I personally often find almost a Symbolist feeling in his paintings of birds and of cats.  This one, "Cat in the Summer Meadow" (date not found, but stylistically similar to others of the late 1880's), certainly has the fresh immediacy of Impressionism, but the undefined scumble of greenery and dandelions is more like an immediate invitation to visit the cat's world at his level, without words, just being.  Clearly wide-wild-eyed kitty here is looking for at least a bug to destroy, but that's a cat's world after all.  Liljefors knew and loved that about them, and painted them with a certain freedom of form to equal that independence.

the biggest cat painting in the world

all photos taken by me

I finally saw it:  Carl Kahler's "My Wife's Lovers" (1891).  It's big all right:  6 x 8.5 feet, and even so I don't know if he got all 42 cats in there.  (Did he?)

As you've probably heard, this painting wasn't originally named "My Wife's Lovers."  The wife in question was Kate Birdsall Johnson (1833-94), whose husband Robert C. Johnson had died 2 years before, but not before coming up with the collective nickname for the Persian/Angora clowder.  The center of the tribe was Sultan (shown above), bought in Paris for some amount so ridiculously huge apparently no one thought to record it.

I was able to get up close to the painting and take a couple of detail shots.  This is a work of European Academicism, a prettified realism, the kind of thing you'd expect of a high-ticket turn of the century commission.  No surprises, and a lot of technical excellence.

You should read the excellent article that Portland Art Museum posted about this work.  (I would like to note that I hadn't been there in years and was thrilled by the overall collection - there's a Barbara Hepworth I particularly loved.)