# Artur Heyer artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/artur-heyer/
Profile generated: 2026-05-30T05:22:30.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1872-02-28
- Death date: 1931-01-01
- Nationality: German
- Movements: Late 19th / early 20th-century European animal painting
- Common media: Oil on canvas, Drawing

## About Artur Heyer

Artur Heyer (1872–1931) was a German painter born in Haarhausen, Thuringia, who spent much of his career in Budapest, Hungary. He is best known for his detailed and characterful paintings of animals, particularly cats, which remain his most widely recognised subjects. Heyer worked in a traditional European animal-painting tradition that found popularity among late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century collectors. His depictions of domestic animals—especially feline subjects rendered with careful attention to pose, fur texture, and personality—distinguish his output within the broader category of Continental genre painting. Heyer is listed in standard biographical references including Thieme/Becker, Vollmer, and the Bénézet dictionary of artists, and his work is documented in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD) and Getty's Union List of Artist Names.

## Common works and media

Heyer primarily produced oil paintings on canvas and works on paper depicting animals. His most characteristic works are domestic cat scenes—often showing one or several cats in interior or domestic settings, rendered with meticulous detail. He also painted other animals, including dogs and farm animals, in both single-subject and genre compositions. Drawings and sketches of animal subjects are also documented in institutional collections.

## Market and appraisal context

Artur Heyer's paintings appear regularly in the European and North American auction market, with over 200 recorded lots in the Appraisily/Invaluable database. His cat paintings and animal scenes are the most commonly encountered works at auction. Collectors evaluating a Heyer painting should consider the subject (cat scenes tend to be the most sought-after), the medium and support, provenance history, condition, and the quality of attribution. Because Heyer's popular cat subjects have been widely reproduced, authentication by a qualified specialist may be warranted. Comparable auction records for similar animal paintings by Heyer can provide useful benchmarks when assessing fair-market value.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine independent artist-identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. The identity profile for Artur Heyer draws on authority files from the Getty Union List of Artist Names, VIAF, Wikidata, the Library of Congress, and the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, supplemented by biographical entries in Thieme/Becker, Vollmer, and Bénézit.

## Sources

- RKD — Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/38249
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q324000
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500145656
- VIAF (OCLC): https://viaf.org/viaf/25635030/
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Heyer
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2006031672
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2015039108