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Carl Kahler's massive and mesmerizing "My Wife's Lovers" is coming to Portland.

(Portland Art Museum)

Watching cat videos on the Internet?

Pfft! Hilarious, but so lowbrow.

Real cat art is coming to Portland.

In fact, the world greatest painting of cats -- Carl Kahler's massive and mesmerizing "My Wife's Lovers" -- will hang at the Portland Art Museum starting Wednesday.

Commissioned by San Francisco philanthropist Kate Birdsall Johnson in 1891, the 6-by-8.5-foot canvas features 42 of the millionaire's Persian and Angora cats.

And no, none of them are playing poker.

The oil painting was publicly unveiled at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and "now makes a stop in one of the cat-friendliest cities in the country," the museum said in its Facebook announcement.

Here's the history of the painting, according to the museum:

Johnson met the artist and world traveler Carl Kahler in 1890, shortly after he arrived in California from Australia, where he had earned fame painting portraits and horse racing scenes. Johnson persuaded him to portray her beloved pets and he spent months studying them in preparatory sketches and paintings. In the finished composition, he depicted the cats larger than life size.

"Carl Kahler's cat painting is a truly monumental homage to the species," says Dawson Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art.

At the painting's center is the pride of the collection, a magnificent Persian named Sultan, who was purchased in Paris for a huge sum. Around him, outstanding individuals and family groups are depicted from virtually every angle and with a wide range of personality traits. Kahler enlivened the scene with anecdotal details, such as the cats stalking a moth and, of course, much playful feline interaction.

The painting was not titled My Wife's Lovers by Johnson's husband, the iron and hardware heir Robert C. Johnson, who had died two years before, in 1889. Accordingto Carr, it seems likely that he coined the expression to refer to the cats and that his widow adopted it for the title.

"The painting has inspired a number of absurd legends," says Carr. "It has been erroneously reported that Johnson had as many as 350 cats and that she left them $500,000 in her will. In fact, there were never many more animals than those depicted here. Johnson left a modest amount to a relative for their maintenance. Her principal bequest established a hospital for disadvantaged women and children in San Francisco."

Kahler died in the great earthquake of 1906.

In 1949, Cat Magazine lauded it as "the world's greatest painting of cats," the museum said.

The painting, which sold at a Sotheby's auction for $826,000 in November, will be on loan to the museum by new owners John and Heather Mozart of Northern California.

By the way, the painting has its own social media hashtags -- #meowsterpiece and #purrtlandartmuseum.

The painting is already getting mad love from Portlanders on the Internet:

I don't even have a cat, but I'm looking forward to seeing this! https://t.co/5FSHnmbIGt — Dr. AB Duncan (@nacnudnosilla) January 23, 2016

Since we're on the subject of cats ...

(Sorry).

-- Joseph Rose

503-221-8029

jrose@oregonian.com

@josephjrose