Felina with a Kitten

Reynolds's Felina with a Kitten from around 1788 belongs to the late phase of his fancy picture production — intimate compositions of children and animals that combined observed naturalism with the sentimental appeal that made his genre pieces among the most widely reproduced works of his career. Reynolds was at this date approaching the end of his active practice; his eyesight was failing progressively, and he ceased painting entirely in 1789, dying in February 1792. The late fancy pictures show some of the textural looseness that attends declining physical capacity, but the essential qualities — the warm palette, the engaging characterization of childhood, the integration of figure and setting — remain consistent with his best work. Felina with a Kitten draws on the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting, where domestic interiors featuring children and animals had been a major category since Ter Borch and Metsu. Reynolds filtered this tradition through his Italian formation and his own sensibility, producing fancy pictures that satisfied Georgian taste for innocence and sentiment without descending to mere sentimentality. The Detroit Institute of Arts holds the painting as part of its representation of British eighteenth-century art.

The child and kitten create a charming domestic scene. Reynolds's warm palette and gentle handling create an image of childhood innocence.