Woman with a black kitten

Giuseppe De Nittis's 'Woman with a Black Kitten' of 1880 exemplifies the intimate domestic subjects that made him one of the most celebrated Italian painters in Second Empire and Third Republic Paris. Born in Barletta, Puglia in 1846, De Nittis arrived in Paris in the late 1860s and rapidly became a fixture of the sophisticated social world that also nurtured Manet, Degas, and Tissot. He exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 and maintained close friendships with Manet, Degas, and Edmond de Goncourt, who chronicled Parisian aesthetic life with passionate attention. Women with pets — particularly cats — were a recurring subject in advanced painting of the period. The cat carried complex cultural symbolism in nineteenth-century France: comfort and domesticity alongside independence and enigma, associations explored by Manet in his Olympia and by Renoir in numerous intimate interiors. De Nittis's treatment is characteristically elegant and socially knowing, situating his subject in the fashionable domestic environments he painted with such fluency. The Pinacoteca Giuseppe De Nittis in Barletta, dedicated entirely to his work, preserves this painting alongside the artist's personal collection of his own works.

De Nittis handles the subject with the light, assured touch that distinguished his best domestic paintings — rapid, confident brushwork that captures fabric sheen, the woman's complexion, and the soft black fur of the kitten with equal economy. The tonal relationships are handled with Impressionist sensitivity to ambient light.