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Louis William Wain (1860-1939)
'Louis Wain invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world'. These words by H.G. Wells, broadcast in 1925, sum up the work of the artist who has become the country's most iconic painter of cats. Born in 1860, Wain rose to prominence in his 40s and at the height of his career painted up to 600 cat pictures a year. His working life also coincided with the great age of the postcard, and this method of disseminating his art helped establish Wain as one of the most recognisable artists of the early 20th century.
His early work depicts cats of the glamorous Edwardian world at play, in that golden era before the catastrophy of the First World War. Not only did the war bring an end to the carefree nature of high society, it also brought financial difficulty for Wain and this may have contributed to the rapid onset of schizophrenia. In 1924 he was certified insane and admitted to Springfield Hospital, a paupers' asylum, where he was discovered a year later. Through a public appeal, and the intervention of many artists and writers as well as the Prime Minister, Wain was transferred to Bethlem Hospital in 1925 and five years later to Napsbury Hospital in Hertfordshire where he remained until his death in 1939. Throughout this period Wain continued his painting, and these later works reveal his schizophrenic illness, with highly coloured, and increasingly frenetic, cats, often with curious buildings in the background, partly inspired by his mental asylums.
Louis William Wain (1860-1939)
The cat who got the cream
Details
Louis William Wain (1860-1939)
The cat who got the cream
signed 'Louis Wain' (lower left)
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour
7 x 9 in. (17.8 x 22.8 cm.)
The cat who got the cream
signed 'Louis Wain' (lower left)
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour
7 x 9 in. (17.8 x 22.8 cm.)
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