LOUIS WAIN
Louis William Wain was born on 5 August 1860. He studied at the West London School of Art, and began his career as an art journalist, drawing many different subjects. However, it was for his pictures of cats that he eventually became famous. From the 1880s until the outbreak of the first world war, the ‘Louis Wain cat’ was hugely popular. Appearing in vast quantities in prints, books, magazines, post-cards and annuals, Wain’s cats are to be found engaging in every form of human activity - from playing cricket, digging up roads, and riding bicycles, to parading the latest fashions at Ascot and making pompous after-dinner speeches at the club.
Despite his fame Wain never made much money, being highly impractical in business matters, and during the war he began to suffer real poverty. Always known as being somewhat eccentric, he now began to develop signs of serious mental disorder. Previously a mild and gentle man, he became increasingly suspicious, abusive, and occasionally even violent towards his sisters with whom he lived.
