There is a strong sense of unease in Women with Cat, created by a jarring stiffness of the woman and cat. During the late 1940s Robert Colquhoun based a number of figure studies on puppets he had seen while travelling through Italy after the Second World War. Colquhoun studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1933. There he met the artist Robert MacBryde who was to remain an intimate friend throughout his life. He was commissioned to produce a number of lithographs for Miller’s Press during the late 1940s.