Cat with European green woodpecker

This unusual 1890 canvas pairs a domestic cat with a European green woodpecker in a composition that brings together the cultivated and wild worlds of the Swedish countryside. The cat as a predator of birds was a subject Liljefors understood from both observation and experience, and this work follows the same predator-prey logic as his raptor and fox compositions, transposed into the more intimate register of a farmyard or garden encounter. The green woodpecker was the most colourful woodpecker in Sweden, its yellow-green plumage and red crown making it a visually striking subject. The cat's domestic status creates an interesting ambiguity: it is simultaneously an animal integrated into human life and a predator that has not relinquished the hunting instinct of its wild ancestors. Liljefors was attentive to this boundary between wild and domestic nature, and works involving cats or dogs have a different emotional register than his purely wild compositions, acknowledging the human world at the edge of the wilderness.

The colour contrast between the cat — typically tabby or grey — and the green woodpecker's vivid yellow-green and red plumage creates a strong chromatic dynamic. Liljefors renders both animals with equal biological precision, the woodpecker's specific plumage patterns given the same attention as the cat's pelt texture and body language.