L'Hiver: Chat sur un coussin

Steinlen drew and painted cats his entire career — he published a book of cat illustrations, sculpted cat figures, and was known throughout Montmartre as the person whose apartment all the neighborhood cats visited. At the time, cats in Montmartre were symbolic of bohemian life — free, undomesticated, outside bourgeois society. L'Hiver: Chat sur un coussin is a color lithograph from 1909. A tabby cat lies on a red cushion, its body rendered in meticulous strokes of brown, gold, and black, one paw draped over the edge. The cat's yellow-green eyes are half-open. A monogram is visible in the upper right. The piece is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.