39 Facts About Louis Wain

Louis William Wain was an English artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised cats and kittens.

Louis Wain married in 1884 but was widowed three years later.

Louis Wain spent the remaining fifteen years of his life in mental hospitals, where he continued to draw and paint.

Louis Wain's work appeared on postcards and advertising, and he made brief ventures into ceramics and animated cartoons.

In spite of his popularity and prolific output, Wain did not become wealthy, possibly because he sold his work cheaply and relinquished copyright, and because he supported his mother and five sisters.

Louis Wain was born on 5 August 1860 in Clerkenwell in London.

Louis Wain's father, William Matthew Wain, was a textile trader, living in London but originally from Leek, Staffordshire; his mother, Julie Felicie Boiteux, was a church embroiderer from a family of French origin.

Louis Wain was the first child and only boy in the family.

Louis Wain had five younger sisters: Caroline, Josephine, Marie, Claire and Felicie.

Louis Wain was born with a cleft lip and as a child was not in good health; he did not attend school until he was ten.

Louis Wain was sent first to Orchard Street Foundation School in South Hackney but spent much of his time playing truant and wandering around London, attending lectures at the Royal Polytechnic Institution or going on insect-hunting expeditions into the countryside.

Louis Wain then did a course at the West London School of Art and was taken on as an assistant master at the school.

In December 1881, Louis Wain's first drawing to be published appeared in the Christmas 1881 issue of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.

On 30 January 1884 Louis Wain married Emily Marie Richardson, who had been the governess of his sisters, in St Mary's Chapel, Hampstead.

Louis Wain's fame became established with the publication in the 1886 Christmas edition of The Illustrated London News of his first drawing of anthropomorphised cats, A Kitten's Christmas Party, which shows 150 cats celebrating Christmas in eleven panels.

Louis Wain had little time to share his success with his wife; Emily died in January 1887 after just three years of marriage.

Louis Wain worked to build up his reputation by taking on commissions for a variety of subjects, including architectural and landscape drawings as well as animals, for a number of journals.

Two illustrations of cats' Christmas parties in 1890 marked a new development in his style of drawing cats, as they took on more human features with Louis Wain often doing preliminary sketches of people in public places.

Louis Wain took up gardening and walking, as well as various sports including running, swimming, ice skating, boxing and fencing.

Two of Louis Wain's sisters, Claire and Felicie, were talented artists, but it was Louis Wain who had to support the whole family and, although he was a popular and successful artist, money was always short.

Louis Wain was a prolific artist, completing hundreds of pictures a year.

Louis Wain wrote many of the books he illustrated, and, as an acknowledged expert on cats, contributed the section on the domestic cat in Hutchinson's The Living Animals of the World.

Louis Wain worked with a variety of media including watercolour, body colour, pen and ink, pencil, silverpoint, chalk and oil.

In 1907, while his mother and sisters remained in Kent, Louis Wain left for New York, where he was offered a contract by Hearst Newspapers.

Louis Wain returned to England in 1910, following the death of his mother.

In October 1914, Louis Wain fell from the platform of an omnibus in London and suffered a head injury which left him in a coma.

Louis Wain spent three weeks in hospital and was ordered to rest for six months.

Louis Wain made a short-lived venture into film animation, drawing the first-ever screen cartoon cat, named "Pussyfoot", but the cartoons were not a cinema success.

In 1924, Louis Wain's sisters had him certified insane and admitted to a pauper ward at Springfield Mental Hospital in Tooting, South London.

Louis Wain continued to produce artworks in the hospital, with his sisters removing his pictures to sell.

Louis Wain was liked by all the curious mixture of humanity that was, at that time, suffering from some kind or other of mental stress.

Louis Wain was survived by two sisters, Claire and Felicie, his sister Josephine having died six months before him.

Louis Wain 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.

Louis Wain was seen as a leading authority on cats, becoming president and chairman of the National Cat Club and serving as a judge in cat shows.

Louis Wain was in demand by the growing number of organisations devoted to animal welfare.

Louis Wain was seen as responsible for raising the social status of cats, of taking them from the parlour to a position where even members of parliament could proudly announce their enthusiasm for them without fear of ridicule.

Since Louis Wain spent the last fifteen years of his life in mental hospitals, there has been speculation about his mental condition and suggestions that he was suffering from schizophrenia, with examples of his art appearing in several psychology text books in chapters covering the disorder.

Maclay's theory has been challenged as Louis Wain was still producing paintings in his old style, as well as more abstract "kaleidoscopic" designs, while at Napsbury.