Boy with Cat

Boy with Cat from 1903, at the Kunstmuseum Basel, is one of Modersohn-Becker's rare depictions of a male child — most of her child portraits feature girls. The cat as domestic companion adds warmth and specificity to the image, the animal's presence creating a moment of quiet absorption. Basel's collection, one of Switzerland's oldest and most respected, acquired this work as part of its holdings of German and international modern art. The quiet intensity of a child holding an animal — both absorbed in each other — was a subject that interested Modersohn-Becker for the quality of wordless, bodily connection it embodied.

The boy's face and the cat are both rendered with the same simplified directness, neither more or less attentively observed than the other. The warm tones of both figure and animal are set against a neutral background that focuses all attention on the quietly absorbed pair.