Petite Fille et Chat
Petite Fille et Chat (Young Girl With Cat) c1882 by French Academic Painter Emile Munier (1840 – 1895); Academic portraitist who was mentored by French Painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 – 1905).
Petite Fille et Chat is an endearing child portrait of a young girl of about age 5 that is lying in her bed with her cat.
She is lying back against a large white pillow, within a large pillowcase with lace trimming all around the perimeter and partially covered with a matching white lace sheet and blue blanket.
She has a light blue ribbon tied at the top back of her hair and is wearing a white pajama gown with lace trimming and blue stripe patterns along the edges.
She is embracing a cat her right hand, while holding a ball like toy that is attached to pink ribbon in the air with her left hand as the cat looks on intently.
In the background is white sheer lace curtain set against a blue wall and an embroidered yellow chair.
Petite Fille et Chat is a remastered digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image that is available as a canvas print online.
Info Below Derived From Wikipedia.org
Emile was born in Paris, France to Pierre François Munier; an artist upholsterer at the Nationale des Gobelins tapestry factory (in Paris France) and Marie Louise Carpentier, a polisher in a cashmere cloth mill.
He also had two brothers François and Florimond; that along with him who trained and worked as artist for a period at the Nationale des Gobelins.
At the factory Emile was trained as a draughtsman by Abel Lucas, and would develop a close relationship with Abel and his family, which led to Emile marrying Lucas’ daughter Heriette in 1861.
Sadly in 1867, six weeks after his wife gave birth to their son Emile Henri, she contracted severe rheumatism, and died prematurely.
In 1871 Emile left the tapestry factory to pursue painting full time, as well as providing painting classes to adults three nights a week.
Then in 1872 Emile married Sargine Augrand a student of Abel Lucas and friend of Emile and Henriette; the couple had one daughter Marie-Louise, who was born in 1874.
In 1884 he received a commission from Governor Leland Stanford of California and his wife Jane Stanford to create painting of their son Leland Stanford, Jr., who had passed away at the age of 15 years; ahd he titled the piece Angel Comforting His Grieving Mother; which the boy as angel that returned to earth to comfort his mother with his hand placed on her shoulder.
One of Emiles most influential teachers was the French Painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 – 1905), and one can see the influence he had on Emile in many of the pieces he created and over time the two became close friends as well.
One of his most famous works, that demonstrated this influence is his piece Trois Amis or Three Friends, that he exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1885; that depicted a chubby little girl playing on her bed with her kitten and dog.
This work was so well liked by the public, that it was reproduced in many forms and was also used for publicity by the British soap company Pears Soap; which was established in 1807, producing the worlds first transparent soap.
This painting helped establish him as one of the premier painters of young children and their pets; and he would continue to paint such scenes along with animal fishing scenes, seascapes, landscapes, genre peasant scenes, mythological and religious subject matter throughout the early 1890s until his untimely death in 1895 at the age of 55.
