This is one of Peg’s three remaining feet. She lost her shattered front leg after she was thrown from a moving car. She gets along great despite the missing limb. The feline paw it truly is a work of art.
My favorite painting is My Wife’s Lovers by Austrian artist Karl Kahler (1855-1906).
In 1891 the painting was commissioned by wealthy philanthropist and art collector, Kate Birdsall Johnson of San Francisco. Mrs. Johnson, who was a wealthy patron of the arts, shared her Buena Vista estate with 50 beloved Angora and Persian cats. I had the honor or viewing the painting at a CFA cat show several years ago. It depicts 42 different breeds of cats including a prominent Turkish Van. The enormous painting measures six feet by-eight-and-a-half feet. My Wife’s Lovers is the world’s largest antique cat painting.
Kahler was paid $5,000 for the piece. A few years later, the painting was displayed at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. When Mrs. Johnson died in 1894, the painting was sold at public auction for $500.
The painting survived San Francisco’s 1906, despite the fact that the art saloon where it was display was destroyed. In 1949, Cats Magazine declared it to be “the world’s greatest painting of cats.”The painting was re-discovered in the late 1980s, in a storage room by cat fancier and art collector Kaja Veilleux. Finally, it was offered at the all-cat collectibles auction with a pre-sale estimate at more than a half million dollars.
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