Henriëtte Ronner-Knip
1821–1909 · Belgium, Kingdom of the Netherlands · Romanticism, Realism
The story
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip built a glass-fronted cabinet in her studio, fitted it with cushions and toys, and filled it with kittens, so she could sketch them tumbling, dozing and knocking things over from a few feet away. That patience made her the most sought-after cat painter of the 19th century.
She was born in Amsterdam in 1821 into a working dynasty of painters, the Knips, and learned the craft from her father, Josephus Augustus Knip, who was going blind as she came up. She sold her first picture at 15 and never really stopped. She painted dogs, forest floors and dead game first, then settled on the animal that made her famous.
Her market was the Victorian middle class, newly fond of pets and keen to hang them on the wall, and her mischievous kittens among sewing baskets and spilled thread suited that taste exactly. She won medals across Europe and worked for royal patrons, including the Belgian court, from her adopted home in Brussels, where she died in 1909.
