The cutest purrs in the paintings of the artist who has been drawing only cats for 30 years

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Henrietta Ronner-Knip is a Belgian animal painter of Dutch origin, who has gained worldwide fame and popularity for her paintings of cats. For her unique artistic talent, Henrietta has been awarded numerous gold, silver and bronze awards at international exhibitions. And the most honorable of them was the state - "Cross of the Order of Leopold II", which was practically not awarded to artists, and even more so to women.

Henrietta Ronner-Knip was born in Amsterdam to a family of artists. Her mother specialized in depicting birds, her aunt specialized in picturesque flower bouquets, and her paternal grandfather was also an artist. However, the father, who painted urban genre landscapes and battle scenes, became the first mentor and teacher for his daughter. He then instilled in the girl an extraordinary love for painting, at the age of 5 she had already begun to copy his sketches, and at the age of 6 she was already his diligent student.

Joseph August Knip gradually began to go blind, his daughter not only studied with him, but also became his irreplaceable assistant. And by the age of 16, the young artist sent her first works to an exhibition in Dusseldorf, where her first painting depicting a cat on a window was sold. The money received has become a great help for their large family.

Since that time, Henrietta has been a regular participant in exhibitions in galleries in Germany and Holland. She learned to work very quickly and productively with a brush, creating pastoral landscapes with castles and farms, domestic animals and birds, wonderful still lifes and portraits, which, by the way, sold very well.

All her life she had to fulfill the role of earner of funds for the maintenance of the family. First in the parental home, and then, after getting married, she had to take care of her constantly ill husband and her six children. But in her marriage, she was happy as a woman.

Henrietta, left without an academic education, first received orders from poor townspeople who wanted to immortalize their four-legged pets. Her clients were mainly merchants, who used dogs harnessed to carts with goods in their work.

Many of them wanted to have a picturesque portrait of a four-legged helper friend in their house, and these portraits became so fashionable that the artist had no end of orders. Although this did not bring much money, it was enough for the needs of the family, and the theme of such works for Henrietta was much more interesting than landscapes and still lifes.

Since 1845, dogs have become the main characters in her paintings. Particularly popular was the painting "Death of a Friend", painted in 1860, depicting an old merchant mourning the death of one of his dogs.

After the exhibition of this painting in Brussels, Henrietta Ronner-Knip gained a reputation as an animal painter and received a large number of orders from influential people. Including from the Queen of the Netherlands herself, who wanted to immortalize her favorite dogs in painting.

The artist painted their portrait so skillfully that the success at court was tremendous, and her fame quickly spread throughout all the royal houses of Europe. And soon the craftswoman was simply overwhelmed with orders from the august persons. Among her customers were Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, Princess of Wales, Duchess Mary of Edinburgh, daughter of Emperor Alexander II, as well as the kings of Hanover, Prussia and Portugal.

Years passed, the fashion for pets changed. And if at the beginning of her artistic career, the heroes of Henrietta's works were mainly dogs, then at the age of 50, the artist began to bingefully paint cats, which until the end of their days will settle in her house and on the canvases of her paintings.

She became an avid cat lady and spent days on end watching little models and capturing them on her canvases. And she allowed them to be naughty, looking at her paintings, immeasurably and with impunity.

Throughout her career, the artist's handwriting and manner have constantly undergone significant changes. If you look closely at the early works of Henrietta, we will see that she began her work under the influence of the old Dutch school of painting. But by the end of the 19th century, she was completely captured by impressionism, which made it easy and airy to write unusually realistic works dedicated to cats.

Their fluffy fur looked so that one would certainly want to stroke it. Henrietta is considered to be one of the artists who discovered the fashion for "anthroporphism in animalism", when "our younger brothers began to be portrayed as people-like - with complex emotions, characters, and a deep, meaningful look."

Painting playful or sleepy cats and kittens, she gradually moves away from dark tones and refuses a well-built composition, and prefers emotional impressionism.

The artist died at the venerable 88 years of age. She worked without letting go of her hand, until her last days.

Henrietta Ronner-Knip did not go down in the history of painting along with the famous and unsurpassed male artists who, with their work, brought a new pictorial language into the history of art, invented their own inimitable style and handwriting.

To the envy of many masters, the works of the outstanding artist were successfully sold during his lifetime, and today their market price is tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lovers of cats and dogs are happy to shell out that kind of money at auctions for the amazingly warm and touching work of Henrietta Ronner-Knip.

And today Henrietta's paintings adorn the famous museums of the Netherlands and many European countries, and are kept in the galleries of the royal houses.

Even today, artists show their reverent love for cats in their work. Unusually funny and cute blue cats can be seen in the paintings of the artist Irina Zenyuk.