Henriette Ronner was surrounded by artists as a child and it is
therefore not surprising that she chose to devote herself to fine art. Her father Josephus August Knip (1777-1847) specialised in painting
cattle and he would teach his children to observe the habits and form
of animals. Her brother August Knip (1819-1859) adhered to the same
theme as their father's, but in the thirties and forties Henriette
started to focus on smaller animals such as cats and dogs. From 1870
onwards, cats became the predominant subject of her paintings. When she started out painting pets, they had not previously been used as an
independent motif in the 19th Century. The art market, however, was
changing: due to a booming economy, industrialists became a new
prosperous class and cats as pets became popular. As a consequence the demand for paintings of cats became as enormous as it remains to this day.