Feline Flush? World’s Greatest Cat Painting To Sell For More Than £200,000 At Auction. Yahoo News on Yahoo November 1, 2015

‘My wife’s lovers’ is expected to sell for more than £200,000 at auction/SWNS

A picture described as the ‘world’s greatest cat painting’ is expected to sell for more than £200,000 at auction.

The painting, entitled ’My Wife’s Lovers’ and featuring 42 felines, was commissioned in the early 1890s by cat lover Kate Birdsall Johnson.

With 350 cats on her 3,000 acre estate, Mrs Johnson was besotted by the animals and employed a troop of servants to specifically cater for all of their needs.

Incredibly, each pet had a name which it recognised.

To show her love for her pets, Mrs Johnson asked established animal artist Carl Kahler to immortalise them in a grand painting.

The Austrian artist, who had never drawn a cat before, spent a staggering three years at her Californian ranch, sketching the animals in a variety of poses before he painted his 2.5-metre wide masterpiece.

At the centre of the enormous painting is Sultan, a big handsome cat who Mrs Johnson fell in love with during a trip to Paris.

The green eyed moggy’s tawny brown coat had splashes of yellow and a white breast but was not for sale. However, he was eventually bought for a staggering $3,000.

The 1891 painting, which weighs a whopping 227lb, will be sold by Sotheby’s at its 19th Century European Art sale in New York on Tuesday.

The painting is so vast it took the nails out of the wall when Sotheby’s tried to hang it in the exhibition room.

They have had to make a special wall to hang it on and it will take centre stage in the sale.

Polly Sartori, head of 19th century European paintings at the auction house, said: “Sotheby’s is delighted to bring what has been called the world’s greatest painting of cats to auction.

“For three years, the artist, Karl Kahler made sketches of Mrs. Johnson’s cats, keenly observing their individual traits and mannerisms, and the culmination was this larger than life-size feline portrait.

“I think what strikes me most about this painting is that this is exactly how any artist would paint a portrait - first observing the sitter or sitters, then making several sketches before finally setting up the easel to paint the portrait.

"With My Wife’s Lovers, we see the same process being used not for a man or a woman, but for a cat.”

Cats have proven to be the stars of the Internet with Twitter users, Instagram accounts and various websites dedicated to the family pets generating huge global followings.

Recognising this, Sotheby’s made a YouTube video on the painting ahead of the sale and it has been viewed thousands of times - an unprecedented figure for a 19th Century painting.

Staff at the auction house have also been posing for selfies in front of it and then uploading the photos to social media.

Polly added: “Even before our exhibition opened, ‘My Wife’s Lovers’ has been seen all over the world via social media. Mrs Johnson would be so pleased.”

Mrs Johnson passed in 1893, aged 60, just two years after My Wife’s Lovers was completed.

She left $500,000 to ensure her cats were looked after.

Source: https://sg.style.yahoo.com/post/132369260703/feline-flush-worlds-greatest-cat-painting-to