Louis Wain’s Cat Drawings

Louis Wain’s cat drawings first appeared in The Illustrated London News in 1884. Wain was a reporter, artist and illustrator who had started out as an art teacher but by the early 1880s was making a living from drawing a wide range of subjects. By this time he and his wife Emily Richardson (of whom his family did not approve) had acquired Peter, a black and white kitten, who turned out to be very influential.

In 1886 Louis Wain‘s first cat book came out, Mr Tabby’s Establishment, but Wain’s fame really took off with that year’s Illustrated London News Christmas feature, which for the first time showed Louis Wain’s anthropormophised cats, which were to become so extraordinarily popular.

Louis Wain’s cat drawings were most popular before World War I, when he portrayed cats as members of Edwardian society. In Louis Wain’s cat drawings they were taking part in tea parties, going to the beach, smoking and playing golf, often with humanised features such as large eyes.

National Cat Club

Sadly in 1887 Emily died and Louis Wain threw himself into work, producing artwork including cats for many publications. By 1890 everyone had heard of him, and his knowledge of cats and promotion of animal welfare was marked by his election as president of the National Cat Club. He was elected president again in 1911.

In 1909 Wain said:

“When I first started sketching and painting cats, they were viewed as detested creatures, looked upon as pests by hunters. Anyone who was interested in the cat movement was seen to be effeminate.”

Wain developed the Club’s motto, Beauty Lives by Kindness, and designed its coat of arms.

Copyright

Louis Wain’s cat drawings should have set him up for life, but he sold the copyright to his pictures alongside the artwork, often at very low rates, so it was the journals that were making money rather than him. This was particularly unfortunate as Wain had five unmarried sisters and a widowed mother to support.

From the 1890s onwards Louis Wain switched to producing books, som under the pseudonym George Henri Thompson, and over the rest of his life illustrated more than 100 books. From 1901 to 1915 a Louis Wain Annual was produced every year, and up to 1940 over a thousand of his images were made into postcards by many publishers. These postcards are now highly collectible.

America

In 1907 Louis Wain had fallen into debt, but just at this point he went to New York to take up a contract with Hearst Newspapers, a massive American media company. The press called him ‘the world’s most famous cat artist’.

Wain began to draw comic strips, including Grimalkin , for the New York American, and Cat About Town. Both series were syndicated across the USA. As in the UK, Louis Wain’s cat drawings were very popular and he was invited to many branches of American Cat Fancy.

Wain was critical of New York though, so he became unpopular with the American press.

Wain had originally intended to stay in the States for just a few months, but this became two years. Wain was naive and easily exploited and was often misled by people keen to use his talents or get him involved in a doomed business venture. Whilst in the States Wain invested in the development of a new type of oil lamp and ended up losing money. Eventually he went bankrupt.

Mental health

Louis Wain suffered erratic mental health in the early part of his life., He had an obsession with electricity and its application to everyday life. In some ways this was ahead of its time, but Wain wasn’t necessarily seeing electricity as the indispensible utility we all use all day now, but rather as a life force.

Sadly Wain’s behaviour became ever more erratic and and times violent, and he found himself in Springfield Mental Hospital in London by 1924. When it became known that he was there, the great and the good of the day including HG Wells, Princess Alexandra and John Galsworthy and the Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald worked together to have him transferred out of a pauper ward and into far more pleasant surroundings. The rural Napsbury Hospital near St Albans even had cats. HG Wells said of Wain:

“He 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.”

Wain’s delusions increased but his moods became more stable and he began to draw again. Louis Wain’s cat drawings were on the go again, but this time as part of fractal-style patterns including flowers and bright colours.

Legacy

Wain died in 1939 and was little spoken of for the next 30 years. Then, in 1968 a biography was published, and this was followed by an exhibition in 1972 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. This revived interest in Wain’s work. Copies of his artwork are selling again, and in 2021 a film was released, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.