Jacob Cats (painter)

Jacob Cats, an excellent Dutch draughtsman, who also etched and painted, was born at Altona in 1741 as the son of a Mennonite bookseller who had to flee Amsterdam because of a controversial publication.

As the market for wallpapers diminished, and his fame as a draughtsman rose, he started to focus uniquely on the latter.

He was celebrated for drawing townscapes and landscapes with realistically rendered persons and animals, his works having a distinct originality, and being marked by a poetical rendering of the features of nature, as well as by careful manipulation.

They are often suggestive of seventeenth-century artists such as Adriaan van de Velde and of Berchem, and are highly valued.

He also copied some paintings on a smaller scale, and has left some etchings.