Art: Eternal Theme

More cats than a critic could shake a pencil at were assembled in the rooms of New York’s Maurel Gallery last week in one of the most amusing exhibitions of the season. Persian. Manx, Maltese, Siamese, Angora, tortoise-shell and tabby were all there in wood, pottery, glass, ivory, lead, bronze, marble, in oils, etchings, lithographs, water colors. Enthusiastic cat collectors and neighboring art galleries had loaned over 700 different representations of cats which, according to the Maurel Gallery’s foreword, are one of the “eternal themes in art.”

Listed in the general pussification was an original Rembrandt etching (“The Holy Family With Cat”); an Egyptian tomb cat from Cairo; a 15th Century German woodcut; prints by Whistler, Pennell, Félicien Rops, Foujita, Wanda Gag; Currier & Ives lithographs; needlepoint and embroidery cats; and a fine carved cat by Sculptor William Zorach.

News of the Maurel cat show spread through the art world last week. Within three days arrangements had been completed to move it to Chicago on its close in New York. Chicago will see intact the opéra of what the catalog describes as “the anonymous masters of ancient Egypt, the mysterious priest-artists of infathomable China, the prodigious chiselers of Japan.”