Sunday, June 2, 2013

Cats in Art: The Lunch of the Little Ones (Bonnard)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is part 4 of 8 of a multiweek study of the cat art of Pierre Bonnard, a French painter (1867-1947). In this series I've moved beyond the two pieces featured by Zuffi and am now studying the rest of Bonnard's cat paintings in chronological order.




Image credit WikiPaintings, The Lunch of the Little Ones, Pierre Bonnard, 1897, oil on panel, held by The Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy, France

Since this was not an image that Zuffi used, I'm the art critic again.

For me, the absolute best part of this painting is the title: Lunch of the Little Ones.  Which I take to include the feline little one on the right, whose form dominates the image when compared with the two human little ones.

There are some anomalies in the image, though: whose plate is sitting across the table from the cat?  And why the lamp directly in front of the cat, unless the point is to emphasize that the cat is an uninvited guest without a place setting.  And is that indistinct image in the upper left another cat, resting on the square tiles?

I do love this Bonnard painting!




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