Here is a sketch of her life:
Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, [was a] Dutch painter and draughtswoman, part of a family of painters, daughter of Josephus Augustus Knip. She was a student of her father, and in her early years she painted mostly landscapes with Brabant motifs. In 1850 she married Teico Ronner and moved to Brussels, where she concentrated primarily on painting anecdotal scenes with dogs and, from 1870 on, exclusively with cats; in these paintings she also paid great attention to the background... Her productivity in this genre was enormous. She was the most popular Dutch woman painter of her time and was internationally famous.
The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague has a number of her drawings, sketchbooks and paintings. Her son, Alfred Ronner (1852-1901), and daughter, Alice Ronner (1857-1906), were also painters.
And here is the artist --
And an example of her work, ( there is lots more here.)
She may have been the first artist in the Western world to focus just on cats. We translate below a Google translation of a Dutch site.
She began painting cats exclusively in 1870. After much practice drawing live cats in her studio, she knew the animals well, whether they were lazily dozing on a pillow or scratching playfully their surroundings. Ronner-Knip was able to convey better than any other artist the softness of cat fur. The cat had increasingly became a pet in the living rooms and salons of the bourgeoisie at this time. And there were hardly any competitors within this specialty. Ronner-Knip planned her cat scenes to reflect the luxurious homes of wealthy citizens: they play between fine furnishings, fine fabrics and precious objects and interiors that will have been familiar to the affluent audience that bought these paintings. Also she titled her paintings with anecdotal notes, like "Around the World "(cats playing with a globe,) and so her humor appealed to her customers.
Is Ronner-Knip a prequel to LOLCATS?
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