Théophile Alexandre STEINLEN (1859-1923), "Chats au clair de lune", pastel on paper, signed lower right. H. 39 x 50 cm Lausanne Private Collection For an explicitly comparable work, see "Cat in the Moonlight 1900" from the ARC museum (https://www.artrenewal.org/artworks/cat-in-the-moonlight/theophile-steinlen/94436?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Thegreatcat.org also features a work by Théophile Steinlen entitled Cat on a sofa, which shows 2 cats, one black and the other brown, which reproduces our composition, this time in a woven wicker basket. Slight tear top right. In this pastel, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen uses very economical chiaroscuro, structured by large dark masses from which the feline silhouettes emerge in reserve. The light, localised and nocturnal, catches the eyes and the back lines, giving the cats a silent, tense presence. The pastel here allows for velvety, matt blacks, animated by rapid highlights that suggest volume without detailing it. The tight chiaroscuro, the dark masses, the economy of means and the absence of decoration correspond to a phase of deliberate simplification, typical of his maturity when everything was already arbitrated in favour of visual efficiency. The cat, the central motif of his Montmartre world, became a vehicle for acute observation, somewhere between naturalism and stylisation. The absence of decor accentuates the effect of the cat's sudden appearance, giving the work a synthetic quality akin to posters and illustrations (cf. Tournée du Chat Noir), where legibility, immediate impact and cut-out silhouettes take precedence in a more intimate world. Undated, this composition is part of a fully mastered development of Steinlen's style, probably between the late 1890s and the 1910s: far from an experiment, it testifies to a phase of maturity in which the artist condensed his means to the benefit of immediate expressive intensity. Sources : - Philippe Cate, Steinlen: Cats, Dover Publications, 1990. - Martha Lucy (ed.), Steinlen: Risqué, Dangerous and Revolutionary, The Barnes Foundation, 2017. - Steinlen, a committed artist", Gazette Drouot 12 March 2020, by Sophie Reyssat