Chat Éveillé. Cat on the Alert by Tsugouharu Foujita, 1886-1968

Tsugouharu Foujita, 1886-1968
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Chat Éveillé. Cat on the Alert

Original etching with aquatint printed in colours. 1929. Signed in pencil. Numbered in pencil 1/10, the first of 10 proofs H.C. (reserved for the printer). Issued edition of 100 impression. A separate composition but linked to the series: Les Chats, 1929. Published by Galarie Apollon, Paris, 1929.
Colours: Tones of soft grey and cream with black, pink on paws and nose, yellow eyes.

Excellent impression with very fresh colours. On pale cream japon appliqué paper. Excellent condition; just a suggestion of old mounting in the margins. Wide margins. Sheet: 16 1/8?x19 1/8?. Plate: 13½?x16¼? (343x413mm).

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Foujita was perhaps the most important of the various Japanese painters who, having studied in Tokyo around the first decade of the century, then moved to Europe to settle in Paris as the centre of the avant garde art world. Foujita not only absorbed the artistic ideas of Paris in the last years before the First War, when he arrived there, but was also to prove to have a considerable influence of Parisian art with his oriental style of drawing and composition.

Foujita?s great passion was cats; his studio was filled with them and they appear both as the main subject and as incidental elements in very many of his works. In almost all the self-portraits that Foujita made - and it was a favourite theme for him - he is to be seen with a cat on his lap or shoulder. He had a brilliant insight into their nature, and he saw them with Oriental rather than Western eyes, being able to express so much of their inner character and of the special atmosphere which surrounds them. His finest studies of cats include the colour etching which he drew in the late 1920?s for Èditions Apollon, including Chat Éveillé, in which he captured that unique way that a sinuous languidness masks alert watchfulness.