This fall, at the London art fair Frieze Masters, dealer Rupert Wace was offering an ancient Egyptian bronze sculpture of a reclining cat. The cat’s provenance has been traced back to Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970), the celebrated author of All Quiet on the Western Front, and his wife, actress Paulette Goddard (1910–1990). This offering piqued my interest as the Carlos also has an ancient Egyptian bronze sculpture of a seated cat (2011.31.1) from Rupert Wace that was once owned by Paulette Goddard.
Paulette Goddard was born Marion Levy in Queens, New York. She started her showbiz career as a Ziegfeld girl in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. At the age of 19, Paulette made her way to Hollywood where she soon landed her first film role as an uncredited extra in comedy duo Laurel & Hardy’s 1929 short Berth Marks. In 1932, Paulette signed with Hal Roach Studios. It was here that she began her professional and personal partnership with screen legend Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977). The couple was married in 1936 while on tour in Guangzhou, China, and starred together in the films Modern Times and The Great Dictator before divorcing in Juarez, Mexico in 1942. Even though the marriage ended, they remained friendly for the rest of Chaplin’s life. By 1958, Paulette largely retired from acting and had married German author Erich Maria Remarque. Both brought to the marriage a love of art collecting, and their home in Switzerland was decorated with antiquities, European decorative art, and French Impressionist paintings.
When the Carlos purchased our seated bronze Egyptian cat from Rupert Wace in 2011, we were told it once belonged to Paulette. She is said to have received it as a gift from Chaplin during their marriage. In the brochure put out by Wace this fall, it is mentioned that Paulette was gifted an ancient Egyptian seated cat by Chaplin in celebration of her role in the 1939 film The Cat and the Canary. Presumably, this is a reference to the Carlos cat. Elsewhere in the brochure is a picture of Remarque sitting at his desk. On the desk are two Egyptian bronze figurines, one of which is a seated cat. I honestly go back and forth on whether the cat on the desk is the Carlos cat. The haunches don’t quite match, but the look of bronze objects can change when viewed at various angles under different lighting conditions. The only other seated bronze cat I have definitively traced back to Paulette and Remarque was sold at Sotheby’s London on December 13, 1977, to Elsa Bloch-Diener (1922–2012) of Bern Switzerland. It was later sold by the Bloch-Diener estate at Christie’s London on July 5, 2017, as lot 12.
A possible lead is at New York University which houses Remarque’s archives. In Box 103, Folder 1, Item 11 deals with a “Small Egyptian Bronze Figure of a Seated Cat.” Checking the archive will have to wait until the next time I’m in New York…or until I can get someone to drop by NYU for me. In the meantime, I can’t confirm or deny that our cat once belonged to Paulette Goddard. I want the story to be true, but cats never do anything you want them to.
