The title of a painting can reveal much about its context, including the intended perspective, setting, or the identities of the figures depicted. Without the title Liberty Leading the People (1830), Eugène Delacroix’s piece becomes simply a chaotic battle scene, confusing many art historians over the identity of the central women. The title emphasizes the female figure as the personification of Liberty, leading revolutions to victory and the paintings overall political message. Furthermore, René Magritte’s meaning behind her painting The Treachery of Images (1929) would be lost without words. 

However, this is not the case for Carl Kahler’s 1891 oil painting, commissioned by American billionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson, titled My Wife’s Lovers. Given the stir caused by this lavishly languid artwork, it’s safe to assume that Kate’s husband, Robert C. Johnson, held a modest position in her hierarchy of affections and that is second to all her 42 cats depicted in the painting My Wife’s Lovers. Perhaps becoming the first known crazy cat lady, Kate Johnson paid the huge amount of £5,000, around £170,000 today, for this massive 1.8m x 2.6m (6 ft × 8.5 ft) painting. Although it has been disputed, it is believed that Johnson owned around 350 cats in her summer house in Buena Vista, California, leaving her cats half her fortune in her will. 

Having never painted a cat before Kahler spent three years studying the anatomy of cats, capturing all 42 cats in turn surrounding the central cat named Sultan. Lending the painting in 1893 to Chicago World’s fair, in the next year it was acquired by Ernest Haquette for his Palace of Art Salon in San Francisco. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake the My Wife’s Lovers survived, shing bright in the wreckage of the salon it was housed, which was not so lucky. 

It’s therefore safe to say that cats really do land on their feet, all 42 of them!