TL;DR — Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen’s Two Cats (1894) comes from the Montmartre artist who, more than any other, made the cat a fixture of Belle Époque art. A committed observer of working-class Paris and a fixture of the Chat Noir cabaret, Steinlen drew cats with a naturalist’s eye and a poster-maker’s boldness. This is the story of the artist, his cats, and the Montmartre world he recorded.
By Found Poster · Published August 2026
The poster and the cats
Two Cats distils what Steinlen did best: animals observed so closely they read as portraits, set down with the flat confidence of a poster designer. He kept cats all his life and drew them constantly — stretching, prowling, watching — and his feline images became some of the most reproduced of the era. The appeal is simple and durable: the cats are real, not cute.
Steinlen of Montmartre
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859–1923) was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and settled in Montmartre in the early 1880s, where he became part of the circle around the legendary Chat Noir cabaret. He supplied drawings to its journal and, over time, to much of the illustrated press of Paris.
He was also a committed social observer. Alongside the cats and cabaret work, Steinlen drew the labourers, laundresses and street life of working-class Paris with real sympathy — a socially engaged eye rare among the poster artists of his day.
The cat as subject
No artist is more associated with the cat. Steinlen’s poster for sterilised milk, with a small girl and three eager cats, and the famous Chat Noir cabaret imagery, fixed the black cat as a Montmartre emblem that survives on posters and shopfronts to this day.
His cats work on a wall because they are unsentimental. They have weight, muscle and independence — the same qualities that make them good company — which is why they sit as easily in a modern kitchen or café as they did in 1890s Paris.
Montmartre’s social eye
Steinlen belongs to the same Montmartre generation as Toulouse-Lautrec and drew the same streets, but from a gentler, more sympathetic angle — less the glamour of the cabaret than the life around it. That warmth is why his images have outlived their moment. A Steinlen cat suits a bistro, a café or a home kitchen, bringing the Montmartre eye into an everyday room.
Steinlen’s cats and Montmartre scenes are catalogued individually in our archive, restored for printing. Browse Steinlen →
Frequently asked questions
Who was Steinlen?
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859–1923), a Swiss-born Montmartre artist known for his cats, his Chat Noir cabaret work, and his sympathetic drawings of working-class Paris.
Why is he associated with cats?
He kept and drew cats throughout his life; his sterilised-milk poster and Chat Noir imagery made the cat a lasting Montmartre emblem.
How does he compare with Toulouse-Lautrec?
They shared the same Montmartre streets and generation, but Steinlen drew them with a gentler, more socially sympathetic eye than Lautrec’s sharp cabaret glamour.
Further reading
- Toulouse-Lautrec — the other Montmartre eye
- Jules Chéret — the father of the poster
- Who was Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen? — a fuller survey (scheduled in this series)
- Phillip Dennis Cate & Nancy Finlay, The Color Revolution: Color Lithography in France, 1890–1900 (Zimmerli, 1978)
Found Poster restores Belle Époque and Art Nouveau posters from museum archives into archival-quality files you print yourself. Browse the archive · How to print & frame.
