Carl Kahler’s massive and mesmerizing “My Wife’s Lovers” is coming to Portland. (Portland Art Museum)
Commissioned by San Francisco philanthropist Kate Birdsall Johnson in 1891, the 6-by-8.5-foot canvas showcases 42 of the millionaire’s Persian and Angora cats.
The oil painting was publicly unveiled at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and “now makes a stop in one of the cat-friendliest cities in the country,” the museum said on its Facebook
page.
The Painting’s History:
Johnson met the artist and world traveler Carl Kahler in 1890, shortly after he arrived in California from Australia, where he had earned some fame painting portraits and horse racing scenes. Johnson persuaded him to portray her beloved pets and he spent many months studying them in preparatory sketches and paintings. In the finished composition, he depicted the cats larger than life size.
“Carl Kahler’s cat painting is a truly monumental homage to the species,” says Dawson Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art.
At the center of the painting is the pride of the collection, a magnificent Persian named Sultan, who was purchased in Paris for a huge sum of money. Around him, outstanding individuals and family groups are depicted from virtually every single angle and with a wide range of personality traits. Kahler enlivened the scene with anecdotal details, such as the cats stalking a moth and, of course, much playfulness.
The painting was not titled My Wife’s Lovers by Johnson’s husband, the iron and hardware heir Robert C. Johnson, who had died just two years before, in 1889. Accordingto Carr, it seems likely that he coined the expression to refer to the cats and that his widow adopted it for the title.
“The painting has inspired a number of absurd legends,” says Carr. “It has been erroneously reported that Johnson had as many as 350 cats and that she left them $500,000 in her will. In fact, there were never many more animals than those depicted here. Johnson left a modest amount to a relative for their maintenance. Her principal bequest established a hospital for disadvantaged women and children in San Francisco.”
Kahler died during the great earthquake of 1906.
In 1949, Cat Magazine hailed it as “the world’s greatest painting of cats,” the museum said.
The painting, which sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $826,000 back in November of last year, will be on loan to the museum by new owners John and Heather Mozart of Northern California.
By the way, the painting now has its own social media hashtags - - #meowsterpiece, # portlandartmuseum