signed with monogram lower right; titled on the frame and on the reverse
7.75 × 11.5 in (19.7 × 29.2 cm)
Auction Estimate:$14,000 - $18,000
Sale date:November 23, 2017
Price Realized
$25,300
(including Buyer's Premium)
Provenance
Private Collection
Literature
William Kurelek, Someone With Me, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1973, pages 17-19
From his earliest years of life on the family farm, William Kurelek experienced a constant relationship with the animals which surrounded him, the painter recalling his early “fiendish attraction to cats” which was documented in a photograph of the painter as a baby “going after a kitten whose tail I intended to pull.”
Kurelek’s talent to hold up an instant of levity within perceived disaster is masterfully on display in “I Hate Water (A Cat’s Loss of Dignity)”, the drenched creature’s expression of disgust and exasperation meeting the gaze of the viewer. The tabby clings to a plank, the board possibly having broken free from the cat’s weight on the dock a moment before. In the seconds which follow the scene, we can expect a quick but unfashionable escape to the flowered bank, Kurelek managing to portray the perfect point in time to spark engagement and entertainment, the subject certainly not sharing in the merriment.
