The bewitching was equivalent to $US19,666 per pet in the picture as it soared way over the $US300,000 expectation.
The "portrait" was by Australia's 19th century master of studio opulence, Carl Kahler, (1855-1906) one of several Continental European artists who had come to Australia to seek their fortunes in the land boom of the 1880s, but who sold up to patch up their fortunes overseas when the boom collapsed in 1891.
Kahler, whose studio dispersal had itself been a saleroom landmark in terms of both presentation and cataloguing, moved to the US and obtained the ear of San Franciscan millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson who owned 350 cats housed in a Gothic style Victorian mansion at Sonoma, north of San Francisco, and obtained the commission to complete the portrait.
Apparently more used to painting horses, the Munich-born artist made friends with a few cats and did a number of sketches of them. Cat Magazine in 1949 referred to the resultant work as "the world's greatest painting of cats." The title, My Wife’s Lovers, of course, was a bit of a spoof. It was derived from the nickname given to the feline hoard by Johnson’s husband.
The buyer of the work, that almost certainly stands as an auction record for the artist, is undisclosed, but thought to be a cat lover. It is of course possible that the work will come to Australia although cats have not always been welcomed by local collectors.
One of the most respected of these, Sir Keith Murdoch, even turned down an opportunity to buy a Bonnard painting which included a cat because the cat was sitting on the table and, his widow the Late Elizabeth Murdoch, told me it was unhygienic to have a cat on the table.
Looking around for possible buyers Down Under it surely is not the man who has been creating most of the high profile collector action of late, Kerry Stokes? We are not seriously suggesting it.
Stokes, however, must have come to cats through Charles Blackman who was one of the media mogul's first Australian favourites and introduced a number of cats into his paintings by virtue of the inspiration he gleaned from Alice in Wonderland.
Stokes's Channel Seven recently won a surprise TV ratings duel with a popular Channel 9 food program when its own venture into plating fell through. Its saucers instead were overflowing.
The apotheosis took sometime to become good as in 2002 the painting was offered for sale by Skinners of Boston and failed to find a buyer. The estimate of $US1.5 million was too high. This, despite, the use of the work as a catalogue cover and a sale known as The Cat Auction.
No great cat god came to the great chancer Kahler's rescue, for he is believed to have perished in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Kahler's genre studies tend to make around $US10,000 each.
The local auction record of $26,450 IBP was paid for an oil on wood panel, painted in Munich which was estimated at $25,000-35,000. It was sold by Sotheby's Australia in Melbourne in Melbourne in 1998.
It shows a dog looking at a woman in a ravishing oranges dress in a garden, both looking quizzical. It was called The Question.
If there were any area which might be expected to achieve respect it would have been equine rather tan feline as he won a great following for his paintings of horse races and racing horses.
The other local master of cats is Sali Herman one of whose works featuring a cat, titled Alley Cat signed and dated '50. Estimated at $25,000-35,000, it sold at Sotheby's, Fine Australian & International Paintings, Sydney,in August 2002 for $41,625,
Dogs have had some bad times in the saleroom, one being painted out in Arthur Fullwood's Sad News and putting a big dent in confidence when the work did not sell in the early 1980s.
