My Wife’s Lovers
42 cats are depicted by painter Carl Kahler in My Wife’s Lovers. Victorian millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson, who commissioned this painting from Kahler in 1891, reportedly owned 350 cats (!!!) at one time.
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For such a massive and riotous piece, My Wife’s Lovers has really gotten around. Johnson lent it to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, and it moved to the Palace of Art Salon in San Francisco the following year. Sadly, neither Kahler nor the Salon survived the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, but miraculously My Wife’s Lovers did. (Maybe paintings of cats have nine lives too?) In more recent years, the piece has been displayed at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon as part of an effort to advocate for cat adoptions in the state.
