He has a number of beautiful and high-bred cats at
Bendigo Lodge.
With regard to the painting of cats Champfleury said, "The lines are so
delicate, the eyes are distinguished by such remarkable qualities, the
movements are due to such sudden impulses, that to succeed in the
portrayal of such a subject, one must be feline one's self." And Mr.
Spielman gives the following advice to those who would paint cats:--
"You must love them, as Mahomet and Chesterfield loved them: be as fond
of their company as Wolsley and Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert, who
retained them even during their most impressive audiences: as Petrarch,
and Dr. Johnson, and Canon Liddon, and Ludovic Halevy, who wrote with
them at their elbow: and Tasso and Gray, who celebrated them in verse:
as sympathetic as Carlyle, whom Mrs. Allingham painted in the company of
his beloved 'Tib' in the garden at Chelsea, or as Whittington, the hero
of our milk-and-water days: think of El Daher Beybars, who fed all
feline comers, or 'La Belle Stewart,' Duchess of Richmond, who, in the
words of the poet, 'endowed a college' for her little friends: you must
be as approbative of their character, their amenableness to education,
their inconstancy, not to say indifference and their general lack of
principle, as Madame de Custine: and as appreciative of their daintiness
and grace as Alfred de Musset. Then, and not till then, can you consider
yourself sentimentally equipped for studying the art of cat painting.
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