Edward Weston 1886-1958

mounted, initialed and dated by the photographer in pencil on the mount, signed, titled, dated, and numbered 'C44-CTS-4' by him in pencil on the reverse, matted, 1944; together with the original backing board from The Museum of Modern Art 1946 exhibition, with the letterpress exhibition label with typed credit, title, acquisition, and exhibition number '125A'; accompanied by a 1985 typed letter signed by Charis Wilson Weston regarding this image (3)

Acquired by the present owner from Edwynn Houk Gallery, Chicago, 1982

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Edward Weston, February - March 1946; and traveling to: 

San Francisco Museum of Art, June - July 1946

Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September - October, 1946

Worcester, Massachusetts, Art Museum, November - December 1946

Waterville, Maine, Colby College, December 1946

Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, January - February 1947

Cleveland Museum of Art, February - March 1947

Louisville, Kentucky, J. B. Speed Art Museum, March - April 1947

University of Texas at Austin, April - May 1947

Colorado Springs, Taylor Museum of Art, June 1947

Other prints of this image:

Conger 1735

Jennifer A. Watts, ed., Edward Weston, A Legacy (Los Angeles: The Huntington Library, 2003, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 24

For his 1946 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, Edward Weston wrote to Nancy Newhall that he was determined that this image would be included in the show.  The print offered here was loaned by Weston to the exhibition.

Weston considered this his best cat portrait, and when Minor White suggested in an essay that Weston must have 'terrorized' Johnny to get this result, Weston responded, '[Johnny]. . . my pet cat who worshipped me.  By no stretch of the imagination could his alert exhibitionism be construed as terror.  I started photographing cats because Charis goosed me on, I certainly didn't use them in any symbolic way' (Conger 1735).

In the accompanying 1985 letter to the present owners, Charis Wilson Weston, the photographer's second wife, writes that she had heard that,

'You have a print of Johnny draped on the stump, with his blotched tabby markings echoed in the plywood backboard.  It was one of our favorites among Edward's cat pictures, just as Johnny was a favorite among the cats.

'When I look at Johnny's expression I hear in retrospect the sharp, high-pitched sound Edward would make to rivet a cat's attention at the moment of exposure. Even though he has heard it before, Johnny's fixed, inquiring gaze expresses his hope of discovering--this time--that mysterious creature that produces such a fascinating noise!'