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Woman with a Cat (French: La femme au chat, German: Frau mit Katze) refers to two, almost identical 1921 abstract, post-Cubist paintings of different sizes by French painter and sculptor Fernand Léger (1881–1955). The work represents one of a similar series of female figures produced during his machine aesthetic period in the early 1920s. It depicts a simple composition, with a low key, nearly monochrome nude woman formed by spheres, cones, and tubes with limited colors of red, yellow, black, and white. The paintings are thought to be a study for his later work, Three Women (Le Grand Déjeuner, 1921–1922). The larger work (130.8 × 90.5 cm) was originally part of the Gottlieb Reber collection in Switzerland until 1958; it was eventually sold to Samuel and Florene Marx and then gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1994. The smaller work (97.5 x 70.5 x 5.5 cm) was held by Paul Rosenberg until it was purchased by the Hamburg Art Collections Foundation for the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1967.

Versions

• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Hamburger Kunsthalle

References

1. Lippard 1965, p. 39; Rewald 1995, p. 61.

Bibliography

• Lippard, Lucy R. (1965). "LEGER. Woman with Cat, 1921." The School of Paris: Paintings from the Florene May Schoenborn and Samuel A. Marx Collection. The Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 087070575X.
• Rewald, Sabine (Fall, 1995). "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1994–1995". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 53 (2). ISSN 0026-1521.

External links

• Description at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Description at the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

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• 1921 paintings
• Paintings by Fernand Léger
• Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Cats in art
• 20th-century painting stubs