BECOMING "THE" CAT PAINTER

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip,
circa 1895

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (Amsterdam, 1821 - Ixelles, 1909) was a Dutch-Belgian artist best known for her endearing depictions of animals, especially cats.

Henriëtte started painting when she was very young, under the supervision of her father, Dutch painter Joseph August Knip (who was going blind). 

When she turned eleven, Henriëtte received her own easel as a birthday gift, and at 17 years old, the sales of her paintings were already supplementing the family income.

During that time, her family moved around a lot and she painted an array of different subjects, including landscapes.

Henriëtte Knip’s father died in 1847, and she moved to Amsterdam in 1848 -where she became the first female to be admitted as a professional painter by the Dutch society Arti et Amicitiae.

In 1850, Henriëtte Knip married Feico Ronner and started signing her paintings as Henriëtte Ronner or Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (HRK).

It was around this time that, influenced by the work of Belgian animalier Joseph Stevens (1816-1892), HRK became fascinated by draught dogs and started incorporating them into her wor.

HRK gained considerable success as a painter of different kinds of dogs: draught dogs, hunting dogs, and especially lapdogs.

The demand for her portraits of pet dogs grew significantly during the 1860s. Soon, she started receiving commissions from influential people, including royals like Maria Hendrika, Queen of the Belgians, and the Countess of Flanders, Princess Maria of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

However, in 1870, HRK drastically changed the main focus of her art from painting dogs to depicting cats and their antics.

Some sources say that it all started with a funny incident: a cat ambled into the house, and HRK was mesmerized by the little rascal's behavior.

HRK then brought more cats into her house and started sketching them as they interacted with furniture and objects, as well as with each other.

She had discovered a new, fascinating subject and a passion that would endure until the end of her life.

HRK had also stumbled into an interesting opportunity: cats were becoming more and more popular as pets, and yet, there was almost no one depicting them. Of course, that would've been useless without her immense talent.

She became one of the most popular cat painter of her time due to her remarkable talent for capturing the softness of a cat's coat, combined with a superior gift for storytelling that allowed her to transform each painting into a spellbinding glimpse of an intriguing, often comical tale.

In the words of the prolific Victorian art critic and scholar Marion Harry Spielmann, who wrote a book entirely devoted to her work:

"She [HRK] has produced a cat-world as impressive as the cattle-world of Potter, and as beautiful and touching as the stag and dog worlds of Landseer; and she has peopled it with a race remarkable above all for beauty and grace, for playfulness and cunning, and for intelligence far beyond what most people have any knowledge of."

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During Henriëtte Ronner-Knip's lifetime, her work achieved notable commercial success and acclaim. She received rave reviews in Europe and the USA and was awarded the Order of Leopold (the oldest and highest order of Belgium) in 1887, as well as the Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau in 1901.

Despite Henriëtte’s great success, her work ended up hidden in crates and almost forgotten during most of the 20th century after being dubbed “too cute to be taken seriously.” 

Fortunately, in 1998, the Kunsthal art space in Rotterdam hosted a retrospective of Henriëtte Ronner-Knip’s work. Her endearing paintings were seen by a new generation and, once again, became popular among art (and cat) lovers.