Concerning Cat Artists 



Gottfried Mind has left innumerable pen sketches to 

 prove his intimate knowledge of the beauty and charm 

 of the cat He was bom at Berne in 1768. He had 

 a special taste for drawing animals even when very 

 young, bears and cats being his favorite subjects. As 

 he grew older he obtained a wonderful proficiency, 

 and his cat pictures appeared with every variety of 

 expression. Their silky coats, their graceful attitudes, 

 their firm shape beneath the undulating fur, were 

 treated so as to make Mind's cats seem alive. 



It was Madame Lebrun who named him the 

 "Raphael of Cats," and many a royal personage 

 bought his pictures. He, Uke most cat painters, 

 kept his cats constantly with him, knowing that only 

 by persistent and never tiring study could he ever 

 hope to master their infinite variety. His favorite 

 mother cat kept closely at his side when he worked, 

 or perhaps in his lap; while her kittens ran ovei 

 him as fearlessly as they played with their mother's 

 tail. When a terrible epidemic broke out among the 

 cats of Berne ip 1809, he hid his Minette safely from 

 the police, but he never quite recovered from the 

 horror of the massacre of the eight hundred that had 

 to be sacrificed for the general safety of the people. 

 He died in 18 14, and in poverty, although a few years 

 afterward his pictures brought extravagant prices. 



Burbank, the English painter, has done some good 

 things in cat pictures. The expression of the face 

 and the peculiar light in the cat's eye made up the 



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