Louis Wain

Louis Wain at his drafting table in the 1890s

Cat club

Late cat pictures

Louis Wain (born August 5, 1860 in Clerkenwell , London , † July 4, 1939 ) was a British artist who was known for his humanized cats .

Life

Louis Wain had a mother from France and five younger sisters. His youngest sister later went to psychiatry. His father was a textile dealer and embroiderer. Wain studied from 1877 to 1880 at the "West London School of Art" and was a teacher there for a short time until 1882. From the age of 20 he looked after his mother and siblings because his father died in 1880. He quit teaching to become a freelance artist. At the age of 23, he married his sisters' governess , Emily Richardson, who was ten years older, which was considered scandalous at the time. A few years later, his wife died of cancer. In 1886 he painted humanized cats for the first time. Between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I , his comics made him very popular in Great Britain and the United States.

From 1907 to 1910 he lived in New York City, where he painted comics of cats. His mother died on his return. Around this time he began to develop schizophrenia , which was also reflected in his painting style. He became moody, sometimes behaved aggressively and developed a distrust of his sisters. Thereupon he was admitted to the poor ward in the "Springfield Mental Hospital" in 1924. When his fate later became public, better accommodation was organized for him. As a result of his illness, his cat images changed, so that in the end they showed almost only eyes overgrown by wild ornamentation. He died in 1939.

Web links

Commons : Louis Wain  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Louis Wain and Table Tennis , in The Table Tennis Collector, Issue 1, Pages 12 - 15 (English; PDF; 1.9 MB) with pictures of table tennis cats (accessed on August 15, 2013)