Jules Leroy Playful Kittens

Jules Le Roy was a French artist, a painter. He was born in 1856 and died aged 66 in 1922. He painted in oils and watercolors and specialized in figures of animals preferring cats and kittens. He must have been an ailuophile (a cat lover) and probably lived with cat companions. Many artists like cats it seems. Perhaps it is because people who like cats tend to be more independently minded. Apparently, (and this might need correction) it has been reported that he lived between 1833 and 1865 but this cannot be correct as he fathered a daughter born 1887.

His paintings are “scattered in different countries” (src: French Wikipedia). Examples of his cat paintings other than the one above are:

Chatons dans un intérieur
Kittens in an interior
Chats dans une commode (Cats in a dresser), which was painted in 1900. It is oil on wood and is currently at the museum La Piscine, Musée d’Art et d’Industrie (Roubaix)- see the painting below:

Jules LeRoy cats in a dresser painting

Lets have a look at the cats in and around the dresser. They would all seem to be tabby and white semi-long haired cats of mixed breed. Perhaps that was the kind of cat that was most typically found in France at that time. This was before the cat fancy started or later in Jules Leroy’s life, the early times of the cat fancy that would not have had an impact (or much of an impact) in France in my opinion during his lifetime.