Sometimes you stumble across a piece of art, literature, or media that makes you stop in your tracks and ponder the delightful and unexpected places that human creativity takes us. It’s likely evident that the residents of Spinsters Row are unabashed animal lovers. If you took a peek at our camera phone rolls, you’d find thousands, if not tens of thousands, of photos of our collective cats and dogs.
So it’s no surprise that for our first art appreciation post, we’re featuring the fabulous “My Wife’s Lovers” painting by Carl Kahler.
Give yourself a moment to take in this painting in all its glory. Count the cats. Scrutinize their expressions, which range from haughty to bored to enraged. There is much to admire and notice, and we encourage you to slow down, stop scrolling, and take a long, hard look. After all, in a world where many of us are concerned with our waning attention spans, it’s clear that focusing on one thing — like a painting — can help you combat some of that scattered brain overwhelm that can come from being chronically on our devices (we’re guilty of this, too).
Here are some questions to guide your contemplation:
- How many cats do you see?
- What colors and textures stand out to you in the painting?
- Is there any cat that feels like the focus of the painting?
- What is the overall sense or mood that you get from the painting?
- If you had to make up a backstory for the painting, what would it be?
The Actual Backstory
Now that you’ve completed your initial inspection, let us share the backstory of this painting.
First of all, if you counted 42 cats, good job! This massive 227-pound, 6 x 8.5 foot painting was commissioned in 1891 by Kate Birdsall Johnson, an American millionaire who allegedly kept 350 cats at Buena Vista Castle in the foothills of Sonoma, California. The Sotheby’s description of the painting states that the 350 cats were attended by a “troop of servants” and “entertained by parrots and cockatoos.”
Oddly enough, Johnson commissioned the painting from Carl Kahler, an artist who had never painted a cat before. He took the job seriously and spent three years studying cats and their poses. The end result? An incredible cat painting that we feel captures the pathos and beauty of the felines on display.
A Name That Stuck
How did the painting get its name? It apparently came from Johnson’s husband, who referred to his wife’s bevvy of feline friends as her lovers. Hence, the title: “My Wife’s Lovers.” It might be more accurate to call out a specific cat who captured his wife’s attention, which is the cat featured at the very center of the painting: Sultan. Johnson came across the cat during a trip to France and offered its owner $5,000 (an outrageous sum for the time) to take him home to America.
Carl Kahler went on to paint many more cats and passed away at age 49 in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. As for Johnson, she passed away from pneumonia in 1893 and left provisions in her will that her cats be taken care of for the rest of their lives.
And there you have it — the brief history of a spectacular painting and the idiosyncratic humans (and felines) behind it.
We’d love to hear about your favorite cat-themed pieces of art. Type them into the comments below!
