Sleeping Cat on Willow Branch
Artist
Watanabe Seitei
(Japanese, 1851–1918)
Datelate 19th century
MediumSumi and color wash on silk
Dimensions159 x 41.6 cm (62 5/8 x 16 3/8 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineHarriet B. Bancroft Fund
Object number2005.4
Label TextWatanabe Seitei traveled to Europe to study Western watercolor paintings and received a silver medal at the Paris Exposition in 1878. He later returned to Japan where he became a pioneer of modern Japanese bird-and flower book illustrations and paintings.
The cat in this painting has lived through another winter and is now enjoying a peaceful nap, high up in an old weeping-willow. It is spring and light-green leaves have opened along the thin, lightly swaying branches. The season is also indicated by the cherry tree branch and blossom motif of the surrounding brocade mounting (the chuberi). The lighter brocade-strips (the ichimonji) are embellished with the design of one of Seitei’s seals.
Seitei’s works were typically Western in their realistic details and exploration of shading, but remained Japanese in mood, composition and technique. Here Seitei carefully renders the profile, fur, bristled whiskers and alert ears of the cat and gives us a sense of morning mist by rendering the more distant branches in gradually lighter tones. Graceful calligraphic lines and a dramatic, asymmetrical placement of the foreground branch against the plain, mist-filled space also infuse life and atmosphere into the painting.
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