A Victorian Eye

From our new collection of Victorian capriccio subjects, an exquisitely painted cat with a bubble pipe.

There's something—now—about the meticulous seriousness with which this comic subject is painted that is both repellent and uniquely endearing to the postmodern eye. But taken in its historical context, the Victorian taste for anthropomorphism can tell us much about wider attitudes and anxieties towards the relationship between humans and animals in the 19th century, and the didactic role that it had to play in the era's strict moral order.

Plus it's a cat, with bubbles, what's not to like.

Stock number JY-222