From 1936 to Today: The Story Behind the Photo
I found the original photograph while browsing the Library of Congress digital archives. It's a 1936 shot by Adolph Edward Weidhaas (1891-1971), a photographer based in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, who worked primarily in advertising. The photo is a small gelatin silver print, just 12 by 9 centimetres, showing a tabby cat in profile wearing a winged helmet and breastplate.
Weidhaas apparently photographed this cat in a whole series of costumes for an advertising feature published in "Advertising & Selling" magazine, Volume 27, in 1936. The full article hasn't survived online, but the Library of Congress holds both the side-view and front-view photographs, and researchers on Twitter managed to track down documentation showing the photos were displayed at "The Snapshot Store" at 108 West 40th Street in New York, in the World's Tower Building.
The Library of Congress calls it one of the most beloved free-to-use photos in their collection, "for obvious reasons." In early 2023, they digitized a second angle and announced it on Twitter with visible excitement. The image was also exhibited as a digital copy in "Not an Ostrich: And Other Images from America's Library" at the Annenberg Space for Photography in 2018.
So what's with the costume? The cat is dressed as Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie.
Brünnhilde in Norse Mythology
The original Brünnhilde, called Brynhildr in Old Norse, appears in the Völsunga saga, one of the great legendary sagas written down in 13th-century Iceland from older oral traditions. In the saga, she is a Valkyrie, one of Odin's chosen warriors who decide which fighters live and die in battle. Brynhildr defies Odin by granting victory to the wrong king, and Odin punishes her by putting her into an enchanted sleep inside a ring of fire on the mountain Hindarfjall. Only someone with no fear can cross the flames. The hero Sigurd (Siegfried in German) rides through the fire, wakes her, and they fall in love.
It doesn't end well. Through trickery and a magic potion of forgetfulness, Sigurd is made to forget Brynhildr and marry someone else. When Brynhildr discovers the betrayal, she arranges Sigurd's murder and then throws herself on his funeral pyre.
The story also appears in the Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems, and in the Nibelungenlied, the medieval German epic that tells a somewhat different version of the same legend. In the German telling, Brünnhilde is a queen of extraordinary strength who can only be won by a man who defeats her in physical contests.
Wagner's Brünnhilde
In the 19th century, Richard Wagner took the Norse source material and built it into Der Ring des Nibelungen, a cycle of four operas that takes about 15 hours to perform in total. His Brünnhilde first appears in Die Walküre, the second opera, as one of nine Valkyrie sisters. Her entrance is set to the Ride of the Valkyries, which is probably the most recognizable piece of opera music ever written, even if you've never been near an opera house.
Wagner's Brünnhilde defies Wotan (his version of Odin) by trying to protect the hero Siegmund. As punishment, Wotan strips her of her divinity and puts her to sleep surrounded by magic fire. Siegfried, Siegmund's son, eventually wakes her in the third opera, Siegfried.
In the final opera, Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde discovers she's been betrayed, and the whole thing ends with her riding her horse into Siegfried's funeral pyre, which triggers the destruction of the gods and the end of the world. It's one of the biggest endings in all of opera.
The winged helmet and breastplate in Weidhaas's photograph are straight out of this operatic tradition, the visual shorthand for a Valkyrie that Wagner's stagings made famous.
My take on Brünnhilde!
Why I Had to Paint Her
Honestly, I just thought she was really cute. There's something about the expression on her face in that photo. She looks like she knows exactly what she's doing. I wanted to paint that!
I kept the colours warm and slightly vintage so it still feels connected to the original photograph, but I wanted the painting to work on its own too. She took a while to get right because the fur needed to feel soft against all that metal, but I'm happy with how she turned out!
The Print
Brünnhilde is avaialble as a fine‑art print and as a greeting card. She's the kind of piece that makes people stop and ask questions, which is my favourite kind of art to make!