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Louis Wain (1860–1939) -

Louis William Wain was born in Clerkenwell, London, on August 5, 1860. He studied and later taught at West London School of Art and began his career as an art journalist, drawing animals and country scenes for publications such as the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. However, it was for his pictures of cats that he eventually became famous.

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A passion for felines -

Wain nurtured an extraordinary passion for felines. From the 1880s onwards, he took a particular interest in drawing cats.

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Early work -

Wain's early work depicted felines in realistic form, caught in natural repose. But it's for his anthropomorphized cats and kittens and their human qualities that Wain became best known.

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First commissions -

Wain sold his first drawing in 1881. Thereafter, he began selling his illustrations to the Illustrated London News.

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Fun in Cat Land -

The "Louis Wain cat" was no ordinary moggy. Instead, his was a creature engaged in various human activities. And out of this eccentric imagination was born Cat Land.

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A cat for all occasions -

Wain placed his cats in all sorts of situations, from enjoying a picnic and playing games to singing and dancing and even driving vehicles.

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Capturing Edwardian society, cat style -

Wain matured as an artist in the Edwardian era. And in Cat Land, anything was possible. In this image, pedestrians, as well as motorists, risk their lives as they take to the road.

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Humanlike behavior -

As his career progressed, Wain's cats became more and more humanlike and expressive. They often appeared in hilarious domestic scenarios, full of fun and mischief.   

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Learning to love the cat -

In fact, Cat Land helped draw the stray cat out of the gutter and transform it from ratcatcher to a loveable indoor pet.

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Height of fame -

Louis Wain enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the first two decades of the 20th century, even working in New York for Hearst Newspapers. He produced hundreds of drawings and paintings a year for magazines, periodicals and books, including Louis Wain's Annual, which ran from 1901 to 1921.

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Feline enchantment -

Wain's illustrations also appeared on postcards; the artist took full advantage of feline enchantment to attract his audience.

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In praise of the black cat -

The much-maligned black cat was given a special place in Wain's work. For centuries seen as spooky and an omen of misfortune, the black cat was turned into a symbol of good luck and prosperity by the artist.

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A lucky family cat -

Indeed, in Cat Land, Louis Wain returned to the black cat on numerous occasions, quite often setting the feline in a family environment surrounded by naughty offspring.

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A commercial oversight -

His unique take on Cat Land made Wain a favorite with advertisers. Many of his quirky and engaging images were reproduced commercially. But Wain was not a savvy businessman and failed to copyright his work. This oversight would cost him dear later in life.

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Capturing the human spirit -

Wain had a knack of capturing the human spirit, for better or worse, in his pictures. In this much-reproduced card, 'A Happy Pair,' the bride and groom appear happy and relaxed. But look more closely. While the bride has the huge wide eyes of someone dreamily in love, the groom is far more tense, his posture stiff and his dilated pupils an obvious sign of feline stress. Are they really a happy pair?

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A modern lifestyle -

This painting is titled 'The Modern 'Arry and 'Arriet'—Harry and Harriet for those who don't drop the first syllable.

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The accident that changed his life -

In October 1914, Wain fell from the platform of an omnibus in London and suffered a severe head injury that left him in a coma for several days. This single event marked a decline in Wain's fortunes as well as his already fragile health.

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Financial predicament -

By the end of the First World War, demand for Wain's work had declined significantly. Commissions were few and far between, and the artist, never a prosperous man (due in part to his failure to safeguard copyright) was beginning to find himself in financial difficulty.

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Declining mental health -

Wain's precarious fiscal situation was compounded by deepening mental health problems. He was still working, but his once mild and gentle character was slowly being replaced by a more aggressive and unpredictable personality of which his sisters bore the brunt of (Wain's wife, Emily, had died in 1887).

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A different style -

As he began to show signs of a serious mental disorder, his drawing and paintings took on a more stylized veneer. His cats were increasingly seen in front of dense, floral backgrounds.

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Signs of schizophrenia? -

The backdrops soon took on a more abstract look, which some art historians took as a sign of encroaching schizophrenia as well as anxiety and depression.

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Admitted -

Eventually, in June 1924, his sisters had him certified insane and Louis Wain was admitted to a pauper ward at Springfield Mental Hospital in Tooting, South London. He was later transferred to better conditions at Bethlem Royal Hospital (pictured).

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Bethlem cats -

Despite his fractured mental state, Wain remained busy producing his art. This image is from his time at Bethlem.

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Final exhibition -

In May 1930, Wain was moved again, this time to Napsbury Hospital in Hertfordshire, where he continued to draw and paint. During this time, a successful exhibition of his work was held at the Brook Street Art Galleries in London. 

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"Kaleidoscope Cats" -

Napsbury is where Louis Wain produced some of his most bizarre work, abstract pieces later dubbed "Kaleidoscope Cats" by one eminent doctor.

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The disintegrating cat -

Much has been written about whether or not these later works were the result of experimentation or Wain's tormented mind. It's also been suggested that the fall he suffered in 1914 had damaged his brain and, ultimately, his reason.

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Pop art -

Louis Wain continued drawing until near the end of his life. He died on July 4, 1939. Suitably, perhaps, his paintings of the 1930s brought him posthumous acclaim in the pop art world of the 1960s. Today, a Louis Wain original can fetch many thousands at auction.

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'The Electrical Life of Louis Wain' (2021) -

Louis Wain achieved modest fame during his lifetime, but was always regarded as an 'outsider artist' by many of his peers. His name became familiar to a new generation of both art lovers and cat lovers with the release in 2021 of the fantasy biopic 'The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.'

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Wain reinvented -

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Wain, the film was met with widespread acclaim and introduced his playful, anthropomorphized illustrations of grinning cats and kittens to a wider audience.

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Legacy -

But perhaps the most glowing tribute to Wain was that uttered by the science fiction writer H.G. Wells in 1925 when he declared: "[Wain] has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves."

Sources: (Bethlem Museum of the Mind) (The National Archives) (BBC) (The Guardian)

See also: The wonderful benefits of adopting a cat

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