Young Woman with Two Orange Cats, Stone House, Rural United States, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Young Woman with Two Orange Cats, Stone House, Rural United States, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Young Woman with Two Orange Cats, Stone House, Rural United States, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-424238

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Holding two orange tabby cats at arm's length like trophies she intends to present to a committee, a young woman in red Bermuda shorts and a white blouse poses in front of a substantial fieldstone house with the particular confidence of someone who owns both the property and the cats and wants the record to show it. The Bermuda shorts, the red necktie bow, and the wire-rimmed glasses place her squarely in the mid-1950s, when American women had embraced casualwear with the same conviction they once reserved for church dress, and the result was considered modern.

The house behind her is the real document. Laid fieldstone construction of this kind — large irregular limestone blocks mortared into two-story walls — was common in the hill-country regions of Texas, Missouri, and Kansas, where German and Czech settlers in the nineteenth century built to last and their descendants inherited something that looked impressive in a snapshot. The split-rail fence running across the yard reinforces the sense of a rural property someone has kept up without making too fussy.

She is not looking at the camera. She is looking at one of the cats, which has the expression of an animal that agreed to none of this. The cats are the least cooperative subjects in the frame, which may be why she looks so pleased with herself for getting this far.

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