oa DE SUBVERSIEVE HUISKAT

The subversive, domestic cat of Dutch artists, 1885-1910

The nineteenth century is often hallmarked as the epoch of the birth of the pet. The life of cats in the Netherlands improved especially thanks to two groups: a bourgeois and noble elite embracing the cat in imitation of English peers, and (poor) artists who looked particularly towards France where authors and painters such as Baudelaire and Manet had adopted the cat as their alter ego. In this article Dutch artists (especially the Tachtigers or Movement of Eighty) take centre stage. They did not uncritically copy French examples but modelled their own cats, both visually and literarily.