10 Artists Who Were Inspired By Their Cats

Meet the artists whose cats inspired their masterpieces

From drawing to architecture, we have composed a list of ten cat-loving artists who used their felines as sources of inspiration. As all cat-lovers know, the lives of these artists were deeply connected to that of their pets: they roamed their studios, interrupted their work, and often, served as models and parts of their studio production.

Edward Gorey

The American illustrator Edward Gorey, famous for his macabre and dark sense of humor, said that his greatest loves were his cats. He looked after them for more than 60 years, and on his death, he gave most of his wealth to an animal care organization. In this video, animated by Benjamin and Jim Wickely, Gorey himself speaks of his love of cats.

Louis Wain

Wain was an English painter known for his anthropomorphic paintings of cats. It’s believed he suffered from a mental illness which could be seen in the evolution of his work. With time, his cats became more abstract and began to incorporate psychedelic patterns. He worked as president of Britain’s National Cat Club and a number of other animal organizations. For around three decades, he produced hundreds of cat drawings a year.

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip

Ronner-Knip was a Dutch-Belgian painter who painted cats and other domestic pets. The cats are usually getting up to all sorts of antics, a favorite topic of the Victorian era. She was a celebrity among the European bourgeois and people lined up to get themselves one of her pet portraits.

Fernando Botero

The Colombian artist has made various paintings and sculptures of cats with his peculiar voluminous style. His sculptures have suffered over the years: from the multiple moves of his cat statue in Barcelona to the mysterious disappearance of the whiskers of another in Colombia. These giant cats weigh at least a ton and can also be found in Armenia and New York. In his early paintings, cats often accompany objects in portraits or family scenes.

Suzanne Valadon

A successful French painter and the first woman to be admitted to the National Society of Fine Arts. She was also a model of famous painters like Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. As well as painting intimate scenes with women, she often painted her favorite cat, Raminou.

Théophile Steinlen

A Swiss-French painter, Steinlen made this iconic poster for a center of bohemian entertainment, a precursor to modern cabaret. Today, it has become a symbol of bohemian life and it’s common to find the image among the souvenirs sold in the streets of Paris. Steinlen used many cats in his graphic production and sculpted them too.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi

One of the great masters of ukiyo-e, “the painting of the floating world” or Japanese stamps. He had many cats in his studio and they often played roles in his art as characters in popular stories. Kuniyoshi also paints anthropomorphic beings. This triptych shows 55 cats on the Tokaido trail route, each one alluding to the name of a station.

Marc Chagall

This precursor of modernism used different motifs that often incorporated cats to give a fantastical touch to his paintings. Cats would often accompany the subjects of his paintings. The Russian painter also gave human traits to his cats, as much to their personalities as their faces and postures.

Andy Warhol

Warhol grew up in a home full of cats and had more than 25 at one point. In 1954, he published his own book of lithographies colored by hand and with his mother Julia’s calligraphy. They later published a book together about the adventures of cats in paradise. In this video, you can see the pop art pioneer’s book and his fascination with felines.

Tomi Ungerer

French artist Tomi Ungerer and German architect d’Ayla-Suzan Yöndel designed this house to symbolize French-German friendship, as part of the project ‘Europe without Borders.’ It’s a kindergarten in Germany where over a hundred children go. The cat’s tail is a slide at the back of the building, and the playrooms in the upper floor allow the kids to look out of the cat’s eyes.

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