Long before felines took over the Internet, the San Francisco millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson commissioned the Austrian artist Carl Kahler to create a large-scale work of 42 of her beloved cats (she reportedly had 350 at her summer residence, with their own staff). The result, My Wife’s Lovers (1891)—a title credited to Birdsall Johnson’s husband—will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York during its 19th-century European art day sale on Tuesday, 3 November. Kahler spent three years sketching the cats for the painting, including the majestic Sultan, centre—reportedly purchased for $3,000 by the besotted Birdsall Johnson. The painting is “a crowd favourite” among Sotheby’s staff, according to a spokeswoman from the auction house, and is estimated to fetch $200,000-$300,000—still under the $500,000 that Birdsall Johnson left for her cats’ care in her will. It will go on public view on Friday, 30 October.
