Monday 16th December - Catnap

 Goodness, look at the date! We really are on the downhill slope now, and barely time to watch The Box of Delights on iPlayer before it's the big day!

Moira and Mr Fluffles looked artistically to the future...

I know a few people who would have my guts for garters if I didn't include today's painting in Catvent.  It is a particularly beloved image for many, and one of the sweetest we will have this month. When I was making the preliminary Catvent list, this was definitely one of the first I wrote down and also, thinking about it, one of the few paintings I can name by this artist, which is shocking as she is a member of the Girl Gang...

Catnap (1858) Rosa Brett

Catnap, also known as The Hay Loft is a little Pre-Raphaelite-adjacent gem. It is luminous, detailed and intimate, all winning qualities of the Pre-Raphs in the 1850s.  Just to drive everyone nuts, even as late as The Oxford Dictionary of Art (2017, possibly even later) Rosa was just a footnote in her brother's entry - 'His sister Rosa Brett (1829-82) was also an artist.' Come on now, there are better ways of saying that, and we are back to 'his wife, also an artist' territory. So, what's the problem with Rosa Brett?

Snipe at Evening (1869)

Rosa was the sister of John Brett (or, to give him his full name 'No Thank You, John Brett' as Christina Rossetti said).  A bit like Joanna Boyce and Emma Sandys, the connection to the Pre-Raphaelite Bros roped them in, but unlike Joanna (who outshone her brother artistically, in my humble opinion, as I'm not that wild about barns) Rosa and Emma were (and are) always seen as the B-team in the family. It has been written that Rosa assisted her brother with his paintings but didn't take credit. This is an interesting variation on Emma Sandys problem, where some of her paintings were (and possibly still are) credited to her brother.

Thistles (1860)

Back to the cat, Rosa exhibited it under her pseudonym 'Rosaius' - this isn't a male pseudonym, more an androgenous one.  After all, she's not Kevin Rosarius is she?  It was exhibited at the 1858 Royal Academy alongside brother John's The Stonebreaker and reported in The London Press - 'let us draw attention to two pictures in the north room around which no crowds assemble - "The Stonebreaker" by J Brett and "The Hayloft" by Rosarius.  Both are perfect and marvels of accuracy and finish.' I've always wondered if it was an open secret, or if people really didn't know that Rosa was Rosarius.  It does seem a bit of a coincidence that the pair were exhibited together, or at least mentioned in the same breath in that exhibition.  However, in the Art Journal's description of Rosa's 1861 Thistles they commented 'it might be difficult to get more interesting thistles than those...painted by Rosarius, whoever he may be' inferring that some critics at least might not have guessed, but as with Fanny Bunn, who took the pseudonym Peacock, why would a man need such an elaborate disguise?  Also, as the critic who admired the thistles went on to ponder, why is a man spending time on thistles, no matter how perfect?  Doesn't he know there are nude women available?!

Rosa Brett exhibited and there are mentions of her work throughout her life but they are few and far between. This reminds us that not all lady artists got to fulfil their potential, which is a awful thing to say, but why was the painter of The Hayloft not given all the paint and canvas she needed because it's amazing and she was obviously very talented. I saw that even in a 1912 exhibition at the Tate, a small painting possibly by Rosa had been attributed to Millais, which is telling indeed and I bet it got that attribution to raise its price to its owner and lender, Sir Sigismund Neumann. Rosa ended up teaching young ladies to paint and draw, as advertised in the Athenaeum in 1876, which I don't remember seeing many men reduced to, but maybe that was a woman's excellent survival tactic. Am I just being cynical in thinking that women are more likely to be advised to have a fallback position when following their dreams? The pressure on men to succeed must be greater yet the expectation of failure for women in also greater.  Hurrah, everyone leaves disappointed!  Happy Christmas!  

Bunny (1873)

Apologies, back to the lovely cat we began with because it is a very interesting picture.  It is hard to tell if the cat having a little nap is Bunny, Rosa's cat drawn in 1873 (if so, Bunny would have been very old at that point), but she obviously was very good at fur as even in black and white, that cat is fluffy.  One thing I'm always struck by when looking at Catnap is that I concentrate on the cat and miss the very obvious question - whose clothes are those? And why is someone undressed in a hayloft...? We could go with the innocent answer and say that the cat represents a girl who works on the farm and is taking a moment in the middle of the day to remove a few items of clothing (it's a hot day) and have a sneaky snooze.  In that way, the girl becomes the cat, which is a symbol of womanhood as we have discussed.  A less innocent reason is that a young lady farmworker is up in the hayloft decidedly not napping at all, possibly with a farm labourer. Outrageous!

On that note, I'll see you tomorrow...