TET Artwork Diary: Nansen The Cabin Boy's Cat of the Belgian Sailing Ship, RV Belgica, Trapped in an Antarctica Winter, 1897

Belgica in the ice. 1897.
Photo: Adrien de Gerlache 

You wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting.

I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon  penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'.

Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin?

However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin?

Turns out, one of the very first recorded ship’s cats, a cat named Nansen, to visit Antarctica, in 1897, was literally introduced to a penguin as a potential ‘friend’, to maybe help it cope with being stuck in an Antarctic Winter. The ship had become frozen into the ice. You can read about Nansen and other Antarctic Cats on the Purr-n-Fur UK website here.

I’d like to say they became best friends but neither cat nor penguin really wanted anything to do with the other, as recorded in the ship's doctor, Frederick Cook's book (featuring a sketch of Nansen) Through the First Antarctic Night. You can read the extract below from June 26.

Extract from the Ship's Doctor's book which includes a sketch of Nansen the cat,
and an account of how they had tried to introduce it to a penguin 'friend'.

Despite Nansen never making any kind of friendship with the penguin it doesn’t mean I can’t depict their potential first meeting... before each retired to opposite sides of the room!

Since I'm not that familiar with what the interior cabins of a Belgian sailing ship from 1897 look like (and I didn't have much luck searching for images) I decided to feed in the extract from Doctor Fredrick's book into Google's Gemini AI to see what I got.

I didn't particularly ask for a stylised photo from the era but that's what came out. I wasn't sure how accurate the style of the bunks or the stove were for that period, so I asked Gemini about the various elements, and got a break down image of each for more detail (I guess?) Both images are below.

Gemini AI's impression of a ship's cabin with Nansen
the cat based on Doctor Frederick's book extract.
Below that is Gemini's attempt to convince me the
various elements are period accurate.

At this point I'm assuming Gemini's image is relatively accurate. I mainly just need some element from the boat for my painting to give it some context that the final image isn't just any random cat meeting a random penguin. I'm planing on including the stove since the Doctor's book mentions a stove, I assume they must've had something like the one shown.

Also, Gemini's depiction of Nansen seems a little too mature for me. The Doctor described it as a 'kitten', and the cabin boy's sketch suggests a smaller cat that maybe is somewhere between kitten and full grown cat.

With my limited research behind me I have started sketching. You'll notice in my sketches below I start out creating my version of Nansen, in my style. Then I start a little work on a penguin design but, since I already have a penguin design in my style, I make some adjustments so it looks more like the 'Pack' penguins Nansen would have encountered. These penguins have an all black face and head. My penguins have a white face since they are loosely based on Fairy penguins.

Three pages from my sketchbook. By the third page you can see the whole
composition, including the stove, starting to take shape but not yet finalized.

You can see I'm also creating a very similar composition to my previous two paintings. I only realized this after my revelation that I paint relationships, with a kind of Ying-Yang vibe in this case... if a cat and a penguin could be considered opposites balancing each other out.

At the time of writing this is where I'm up to. I'm hoping to finalize my composition and start painting within the next week or so.  I should have some work in progress stages of the painting to show very soon.