Welcome to the Cats of the Louvre Guided Tour. I am your guide, Francois Cateaubriand ici, and I vill be specking to you in zee broken English for the entirety of zee afternoon.

How's zat? You people have (how you zay?) paid only for zee bargain-rate tour?

Ah! What a relief! That means I can speak to you in plain old English for a change. Mind you, I won't sound half as impressive, but you get what you pay for, folks. Besides, the facts are the same whether I'm speaking to spendthrifts or penny-pinchers such as yourselves.

Right, follow me, people. We've had several visitors get lost in this museum just this past month, only to turn up days later, starving and thirsty -- though happily they were largely oblivious to the fact, being as they were in rapt contemplation of some resident masterpiece (usually the Mona Lisa, for some reason, but occasionally also a martyr or madonna by the likes of a Rafael or Titian: Just last week we had to throw water in the face of a Kansas school teacher to convince him to come away at long last from the all-too-moving rendering of the Death of Saint Peter by the latter of those two artists -- and that painting was just a copy, too, the original having been destroyed by an Austrian bomb in 1867! True, the pedant in question was probably aesthetically enriched by the experience, but the museum is run on a shoestring budget these days, and we can't be sending out expensive hound dogs every time a tour group comes back with one less person than they left with.)

Now, we're coming up to our first painting, the famous Madame Pompadour by
the famous pastelist, Maurice Quentin de la tour. (That's it, gather around, folks: Don't shove. Everybody gets a chance to look, yes?)

I see some hands going up, but before you even ask, let me anticipate your question, since I get the same thing from every single tour group:

You're wondering (understandably enough) why you have never heard of these so-called cat paintings that we are introducing you to today here at the Louvre. You say that you've heard, for instance, of the painting of Madame Pompadour by Maurice Quentin, but you had never realized that their was a feline representation of the same.

The explanation is simple: These so-called 'cat versions' of masterpieces are really just rough drafts of the paintings that we are familiar with today and as such were never intended for display by the artists who painted them. You see, French artists (especially in the 18th and 19th centuries) frequently used cats as a sort of cheap stunt double for the individuals that they were commissioned to paint, so that they could practice creating the painting as a whole, without concentrating on the specific faces of their patron, but painting in their stead, a simple, everyday cat face.

That way, when the painting subject finally arrived at the studio, the artist could focus their efforts on limning out the precise facial features of that one individual without spending a disproportionate amount of time rendering the surroundings, the depiction of which they had already mastered with the assistance of the kitty-cat stand-in.

Only recently did curators like myself recognize the artistic merit in some of these feline rough drafts, hence the sudden prominence of these long-neglected oeuvres on today's art scene.

Can everybody hear me? Good. Can everybody see me? Good. Can everybody look into my eyes and tell me what I'm thinking of at this precise second in history? No? I thought not. Just checking.

Here we see Madame Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV, a nice pastel on gray blue-paper. Notice the majestic and regal carriage of the (ahem) 'cat' head. Cats can't exactly 'pose' on command, of course, but artists did tend to seek out felines whose general demeanor seemed to match that of their ultimate subject. By the way, if you look very closely, you can see a little animal poking its head up behind the chair of the great woman. Does anyone know what that is? Kids?

Yes, that's right, it's a rat! Very good.

What irony, folks, huh? Here we have the picture of a cat, and then beside it, the representation of its mortal enemy, the rat!




And check out the attention to detail here that Quentin has lavished on the scene: If you look real closely, you can even see a piece of cheese that the rat is holding, as if the vermin was completely at ease, even in the close proximity of its arch foe. Luckily for him, the Marquise is far too dignified a personage to even betray a hint that the rat exists, much less that the obviously saucy rodent is brazenly eating cheese not 5 inches from her well-dressed person (or from her well-dressed cat or whatever). Of course, you could also read this picture as a twist on the Peaceable Kingdom of Edward Hicks (the lamb lying down with the lion and all that jazz), but most scholars think that the rat here is just being impudent and that there's no question of amity and fellow feelings between these two historically feuding species.

Well, we've only scraped the surface of this picture -- so let's leave while we're ahead. (If we stay any longer, I'm afraid one of these antsy kids will actually gouge this masterpiece with a ballpoint pen or something! Whoo-hoo!)

Right, stay in line, folks. Remember, if you get lost in here, we might not be able to afford the necessary number (or indeed quality) of hound dog to find you! (Yet another vexing side effect of the ongoing worldwide financial downturn!)

Right, picture number 2 is on your left up here. (Don't push, already! Jeepers, folks!)

Well, now we move from the proto-baroque of Quentin to the Empire Style of Jaques-Louis David and his famous Madame Raymond de Verninanc (or 'Verne' as her friends used to call her). This was well after the artist's somewhat poorly chosen career move of becoming artistic dictator for the French Revolution. (Well, we all make mistakes.)

Of course, some critics maintain that the head of this cat looks a little (how can I put this?) artificially 'pasted on' here, but to be fair, David never realized that this cat-version of his famous painting would be made public. Still, anyone with a little pride... Ahem. But we must forgive him, under the circumstances, I suppose.


Oh, and there's a little surprise in this painting, too: Do you see it, kids? If you look very closely, Madame Raymond has her hand on a... what, kids?

Kids: A chair!

What? Oh, yes, a chair, of course: But what is her other hand on!




Kids: A dress!

What? Okay, yes: a dress -- but then just above the dress, there is a what, kids?

Kids: A RAT!!!!!!!

Okay, close enough: It's actually a mouse in this case, but a miss is as good as a mile, as they say.

Again, the irony here is startling, when we contemplate the bone-deep animosity of the two species that are shadowed forth here -- albeit with some surprising clumsiness on David's part viz-a-viz the slapdash placement of his stand-in cat-head.

A rat, indeed!

Right: let's move to picture 3 in the far gallery.

No running, kids, please! Sheesh!

Now, can everybody see? If this looks to you like another cat-painting by David, you've got what we call 'artistic eyes' in the trade. Does anybody know who this is, by the way?

And please keep a civil tongue in your head when you answer that question: yesterday I had Sinead O'Connor in a tour group, and her answer like to have curled my toupee -- or rather it would have curled it if I actually wore one, which I don't, of course. (Humph! Toupee, indeed!)

I was like, um, no, Sinead, that is not the Devil Incarnadine, as you put it -- but nice guess, nonetheless.

No, this is actually Pope Pius VII -- or rather the cat version of the same, elected Pope in 1800 -- a man who, not unlike David himself, found reason to sour on the French Revolution after push came to shove in the streets of Paris -- and especially after push came to the chopping off of heads. But then artists and divines can be rather squeamish.

No laughing, folks: I went to school to learn this stuff, remember? I can even send you a copy of my degree for an SASE. I don't want to drop names, but I graduated from one of the biggest, most established community colleges in Iowa!

Uh-oh: I just saw my first yawn. Quick, everybody run to picture number 4 before we're all consumed with the ennui of Charles Baudelaire himself, hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon art patron.


Right. Now while everybody catches their breath after that healthy sprint, I'll give you guys the skinny on the Standard Bearer of Vigor Boucquet, or rather the cat-version painting of the same.

I know what you're thinking: this guy's 17th-century Flemish, not 18th-century French. That's true, but Vigor is thought to be the first European artist who ever used cats in the rough-draft depiction of their masterpieces. As such, he was a great inspiration for the artists that followed him and therefore a natural choice when it comes to finishing up this great lecture of mine entitled Cats of the Louvre.

Um, that's your cue, folk: You can applaud already, now. (Sheesh!)

Right, I hope you learned a lot. Now if you'll be so kind as to exit stage left. I'm sorry to give you guys the bum rush like this, but you did only pay for the cheap version of my spiel today. Besides, it looks like a high-class group is already forming at the information desk for my next tour, and since they're obviously going to pay for the deluxe version of my talk, I'd better practice my French accent in order to keep my silver tongue flexible.

That's it, folks: off you go. Thank you so much. Don't be a stranger. Yes, bye-bye, now.


Now, let me see: Mesdames et messieurs, I would like to --

No, that's not right -- let me try again:

I VOULD like to velcome you to (how you zay) zee great Cat Tour at zee Louvre.

Yep. I've still got it. Ooh, I just love these classy tour groups! Wait for me, folks. I'm coming. Er, I mean: J'arrive! J'arrive!