![the cat returns figurine the cat returns figurine](https://s.ecrater.com/stores/8570/510963713933b_8570n.jpg)
It turns out, Michel Monet, who was believed to have died childless, actually fathered a daughter that he never formally acknowledged, but to whom he’d gifted many objects from her famous grandfather. That’s when Adrien Meyer, co-chair of the Impressionist and modern art department at Christie’s auction house was invited to a private home where Monet paintings and artifacts, like his eyeglasses, were kept in drawers and cardboard boxes throughout the house. It wasn’t until 2011 that art historians learned why. While Michel Monet left his vast collection of family artifacts and paintings to France’s Académie des Beaux-Arts and its Marmottan Monet Museum, some paintings and items from his home and personal collection appeared to be missing from the gift, reports Mark Brown at The Guardian. Now, reports Martin Bailey at the Art Newspaper, the cat is back at Monet’s house in northern France, an unexpected return made possible because of a newly surfaced member of the Monet family tree. But following Michel’s own death four decades later, the little white figurine appeared to have vanished. After the Impressionist icon’s death in 1926, the terracotta feline went to Monet’s son Michel.
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Claude Monet’s Giverny abode was once home to a glazed biscuit cat, which friends remember was positioned to appear as if it was curled up on a pillow in the artist’s dining room couch.