Woman with a Cat

An elderly woman sits in a plain chair in a light-filled, sparsely furnished interior, cradling a black cat against her breast. Her head is bowed gently to one side and her hands embrace the animal with a tenderness the museum compares to traditional images of motherhood — and of Mary holding the infant Jesus; the bright stripes of her skirt and the deep black of the cat’s fur draw the eye to the pair at the heart of the quiet composition. The young Max Liebermann, soon to be the leading figure of German Realism, had taken from Courbet and Millet the conviction that common people deserved sympathetic, unidealised portrayal; this study of a solitary old woman and her companion, its brushwork visible and its mood warm, belongs to the years in which he built that reputation. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.