23 August 2026

Cats who balance babies' cradles in floods - updated

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
'The Inundation of The Biesbosch in 1421"

"Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted [the top image] in the 1800s,
after a true story from 1421 when a flood carried off a cat and a cradle.
The cat jumped from side to side on the cradle to keep it upright..."

John Everett Millais: 'A Flood', 1870

Images found at My Own Thoughts, via A Polar Bear's Tale [as of 2016, both sources have undergone linkrot].

A hat tip to reader Ceridwen for the name of the artist for the second image.  He notes that the painting "represents an incident following the flooding of Sheffield UK after a reservoir burst in 1864."

Reposted from 2010 (wow) with a tip of the blogging cap to another (anonymous) reader who found a third painting of this subject matter:


Found on a commercial website, described as "after" the same artist (Millais) - whatever that means.

The historical event is in any case not a miracle - the cat is trying not to get wet, rather than trying to save the baby per se.

3 comments:

  1. The second painting is by John Everett Millais, not Holman Hunt. It represents an incident following the flooding of Sheffield UK after a reservoir burst in 1864.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the information, Ceridwen. I've updated the text (and the title) of the post. Curious that two similar events supposedly happened four centuries apart.

      Delete
  2. Another one:
    https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/The-Inundation-of-the-Biesbosch-in-1421/7C6A24EF311C657C

    ReplyDelete