« My wonderful new task lamp | Home | AirTurn — "Music reading made easy" »
January 28, 2012
Is that a cat in a canoe in George Caleb Bingham's 1845 painting "Fur Traders Descending the Missouri?"
Sure looks like it to me.
I've seen photos of this painting — in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, hanging in Gallery 758 — before, but only Thursday, when it accompanied Eric Gibson's Wall Street Journal story about the museum's expanded and renovated galleries of American painting, did I notice the cat.
I attribute this to the cat lobe of my brain having been fully activated by the constant close presence of my beloved Gray Cat.
Part of the museum's description of the painting reads, "The scene is impenetrable and bewitched, marked by mist and silence."
January 28, 2012 at 10:01 AM | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c5dea53ef0168e621ce83970c
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Is that a cat in a canoe in George Caleb Bingham's 1845 painting "Fur Traders Descending the Missouri?":
Comments
Half breed indeed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6E98ZRaU1s&feature=fvst
Posted by: JoePeach | Jan 29, 2012 9:19:27 AM
"The animal in the boat is widely accepted as a bear cub and not a cat." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Caleb_Bingham#Fur_Traders_Descending_the_Missouri
Accepted by whom? 10,0000 ignoramuses crying a horse is a dog will not make the animal bark.
BTW Bingham titled the piece *French Trader, Half-breed Son*. The wimps back east changed the title. And likely they came up with the notion that the animal was a bear cub.
Posted by: antares | Jan 29, 2012 5:39:56 AM
yeah, long snout, tongue hanging out, panting, a fox like animal...in higher res, the bushy tail, actually looks like a pelt, lying next to it, in the boat. Meant to be ambiguous? An afterthought cat turned dog? The eyes are in a weird place, sort of low. Who knows. I've never seen a dog that looks like that, but doesn't look like the coati either. Beautiful painting.
Posted by: tamra | Jan 28, 2012 9:57:33 PM
It could be a coati. http://curiousanimals.net/animals/coati/
Posted by: Ashley | Jan 28, 2012 8:55:20 PM
To me, it looks like a fox. See the bushy tail?
Posted by: antares | Jan 28, 2012 6:49:33 PM
From the close-up you posted originally, it appeared to have an elongated snout. Dog?
Posted by: Alex | Jan 28, 2012 1:38:25 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
