CHAPTER X 



CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS 



WHILE thousands of artists, first and last, have 

 undertaken to paint cats, there are but few 

 who have been able to do them justice. Artists who 

 have possessed the technical skill requisite to such 

 delicate work have rarely been wilUng to give to what 

 they have regarded as unimportant subjects the neces- 

 sary study ; and those who have been willing to study 

 cats seriously have possessed but seldom the skill 

 requisite to paint them well. 



Thomas Janvier, whose judgment on such matters 

 is unquestioned, declares that not a dozen have suc- 

 ceeded in painting thoroughly good cat portraits, por- 

 traits so true to nature as to satisfy — if they could 

 express their feelings in the premises — the cat sub- 

 jects and their cat friends. Only four painters, he 

 says, ever painted cats habitually and always well. 



Two members of this small but highly distinguished 

 company flourished about a century ago in widely 

 separated parts of the world, and without either of 

 them knowing that the other existed. 



One was a Japanese artist, named Ho-Kou-Say, 

 whose method of painting, of course, was quite unlike 



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