The kitten of Van Gogh and Gauguin

by Paul Gauguin The Kitten, which has been hidden in a private collection for more than a century, has just gone on display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This delightful work was painted while the French artist was staying with Van Gogh at the Yellow House in Arles.

Artistically, this cat (or kitten) faithfully followed Gauguin on his distant travels. It appears for the first time on the Antillean island of Martinique, where the feline is depicted in the foreground Tropical conversation. Apparently, the cat is licking milk and in his haste he put his front paws on the big plate.

A year later the creature appears again, in Arles, in The Kitten. Since Gauguin did not take the Tropical conversation painting Arles, he may well have had a pencil drawing of Martinique handy (one such drawing, from his West Indies sketchbook, still survives in a private collection). Or he could simply remember the animal’s distinctive pose.

Most strikingly, the cat reappears a decade later in Gauguin’s greatest masterpiece, Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? (detail below), made in 1897-98 on the island of Tahiti. It is a very ambitious composition, almost four meters wide.

A pair of cats feature prominently in the central foreground: one facing the viewer and the other in the Martinique pose, front paws on the plate. This time the black cat turned white, albeit with dark spots on the back.

Looking at the newly released painting of The Kitten, what might appear to be simply a charming depiction of a feline is actually all that remains of what was probably originally a much larger still life. Gauguin was presumably not satisfied with the entire composition and at some point cut out and discarded three quarters of the canvas, saving only the left quarter (72 x 25 cm).

The clue to the original image comes in a comment Vincent wrote to his brother Theo on November 21, 1888. Gauguin was working “on a large still life of an orange pumpkin and some apples and white linen on a yellow background and foreground.”

Interestingly, Van Gogh himself had previously painted a still life with the slightly unusual combination of pumpkins and apples (September 1885, now Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), so he may have suggested the composition to his friend.

However, there is a vague visual representation of part of Gauguin’s lost still life in the background of Van Gogh’s work. Portrait of Paul Gauguin. This is also a fascinating image, as it had been largely dismissed as a fake since the 1930s and had not been exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum (it was recorded as “anonymous” in the museum’s 1987 catalogue). I suspected that it might well be a genuine one, although it doesn’t succeed as a work of art.

Years ago I examined Portrait of Paul Gauguin in the conservation studio of the Van Gogh Museum and soon after published an article in Apollo (July 1996), defending its authenticity. Five years later he was accepted by the museum. For me, the mark of its acceptance was when the museum started selling postcards of the portrait.

Portrait of Paul Gauguin depicts the artist in his beret, working on a yellow canvas at a slight angle on an easel. In front of his face is the vague outline of a circular object and below this is a small orange area, presumably a pumpkin. Therefore, the portrait represents Gauguin in the act of painting his lost still life. In a sense, it mirrors Gauguin’s portrait of his friend sunflowers (August 1888) on his easel, probably made at the same time.

The yellow background in both The Kitten and the still life on the easel Portrait of Paul Gauguin it could well represent a tribute to Van Gogh and his favorite color. Only three months earlier Van Gogh had painted his sunflowers with a bold yellow background, an image greatly admired by Gauguin.

The investigation revealed that The Kitten and the Portrait of Paul Gauguin both were painted on jute, rather than traditional artists’ canvases. Although further research is now underway at the Van Gogh Museum, it is likely that the two paintings were made from the same 20-metre roll of jute that Gauguin had bought in Arles shortly after his arrival.

And what happened The Kitten? It was sold by Gauguin’s dealer in Paris, the avant-garde figure Ambroise Vollard. He was known for his love of cats and one wonders if Gauguin could have included the two creatures in Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? partly to please his dealer.

In 1906, three years after Gauguin’s death, The Kitten it was acquired by the French collector and artist Gustave Fayet. A photograph from 1913 shows it hanging in his study.

Fayet died in 1925. Although the current owner is not being named, he is presumed to be a descendant of the collector. It is very unusual for a Gauguin painting to remain in the same family since its original purchase.

Looking at Gauguin’s playful cat, one can see the possible influence of Japanese prints on his mind, as these creatures appeared frequently in the work of Asian artists such as Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861), who was well represented in Van Gogh’s collection. Gauguin did not copy a cat from a specific Japanese print, but he may have been inspired by them.

The Kitten it also shares another similarity with Japanese prints: the sharp cut. Gauguin cut the canvas only by cutting off the tip of the cat’s tail. Such dramatic cutouts were uncommon in European art of the time, but common in Japanese prints. The fact that Gauguin’s composition is signed so prominently suggests that he was satisfied with the cut out fragment.

Now that The Kitten is on loan to the Van Gogh Museum, further research will be carried out on the image. Hopefully it will be possible to examine the edges of the canvas and use non-invasive techniques to examine below the surface of the still life that is apparently on the easel of the painting.

In the meantime The Kitten it is shown alongside other paintings made by the two artists during their fateful ten weeks in the Yellow House, a period that came to an abrupt end when Vincent mutilated his ear.