Louis wain kaleidoscope cat professional#

There’s a bit of a theory that his hugely popular cat caricatures made the idea of the domestic cat more popular in homes, as while cats had been domesticated for the past couple of thousand years, they were never really household pets until about 150 years ago - when Wain was at the height of his popularity. His commercial art looks almost conventional to modern eyes, as it’s a style that’s been much imitated by other artists, so his more surreal works are much more interesting to see, and they’re also much less often shown.įrom the dreamscape cat looking not unlike an Indian god to the overwhelming textile effect backgrounds he often applied in later years, there’s a feast of colours to see.Īs an exhibition, it’s a chance to reacquaint ourselves with the man who created the original creature caricatures, and a rare chance to see some of his later unpublished works. They dominate more for their size and abstract appearance compared to the smaller more commercial drawings and drop blasts of colour into the gallery. However, dominating the room are the mirror paintings, done while he was in the hospital. Today the idea of animals being drawn as if carrying out human activities is routine, but at the time, it was a radical idea, and Wain was prolific in his output, producing as many as 200 drawings a year for around 30 years.

Louis wain kaleidoscope cat professional#

That’s when Bethlem Hospital was in Southwark, today it’s in South London, and that’s where the exhibition of his work has just opened.Ī grand building, now the Museum of the Mind, is home to his collection, and a room has been filled with a choice selection, ranging from his very earliest landscapes through the animals for newspapers, and to his commercial cat caricatures.Īlthough he made his name with cat cartoons, he was in fact a very skilled artist in general, and earned his living as a professional newspaper artist focusing on animal sports reports – such as horse and dog racing – but it was his work on drawing cats that made him a celebrity. We will never be sure why he deteriorated to the point of ending up in a hospital, but his fame as an artist saw him “rescued”, as he had been sent to a paupers institution, but funds were raised and he was moved to Bethlem Hospital instead. It’s the more abstract cats that were later, after his death, to be interpreted as evidence that Wain may have suffered from schizophrenia, although the post-mortem art analysis is today thought to be badly flawed. There are cats on mirrors, cats playing cricket, cats playing golf, and lots of cats in almost precursors of 1960s psychedelic designs. So it is that the very hospital in South London where Wain was treated has put on an exhibition of his famous cat caricatures. Louis Wain was once exceptionally famous, but his fame has faded over time, and he is now almost as well known for suffering a mental health condition than for drawing lots of cats, but a new film about his life with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role will give him and his work a new burst of attention. One Christmas, a patient in a psychiatric hospital was asked to help with the decorations, and he painted Jesus on a mirror, but no ordinary Jesus, this was Jesus as a cat, and the patient was Louis Wain.