Pre-Meowphaelites

First, we interrupt our regularly scheduled blog to bring you an update. I love doing this blog. Through it, I can not only celebrate my love of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts & Crafts Movement, but I can also learn. However, my brain may just...colloquially, 'go 'splodey' if I continue on doing 6 posts a week! Many of them take a lot of time to research, though it may not appear so. So starting this week, the posts may not be daily. I figure that gives us all more time to chit chat about each one anyway! Still expect at least a handful every week, but just not daily.

Now to today's topic. The last two entries have been about the Pre-Raphaelite cartoons, and cartoons about Pre-Raphaelites, respectively. Today I wanted to chat about a charming modern artist who does kitschy (and I mean kitschy good and amusing, not tacky) paintings of cats posed in Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Her name is Susan Herbert, and she has a wonderful and amusing book that I'd recommend as a light-hearted read or gift idea to any lover of Pre-Raphaelites who doesn't take the art too sacredly.

The book is called Pre-Raphaelite Cats, aptly, and in case you don't quite recognize what artwork is being parodied, there's a glossary in the back with small images of the original paintings. Several of Herbert's artworks made me laugh out loud. What gets me the most is the care she takes to add the details as cats instead of humans....for instance, the stained glass on Millais' Mariana? Cats. The figures on the mantle clock in The Awakening Conscience? Cats.

I saved my favorite for last....having a black cat-child of my own, I adore this one: