Written by admin on 14 November, 2009 – 2:34 pm -
Louis William Wain was born in Clerkenwell, Central London on 5 August 1860. His mother was French - hence the name Louis and his father was a textile trader and embroiderer. Louis was the eldest child of six, and the only male. Due his having a cleft lip, his parents kept him away from school until he was 10 - even then he spent a great deal of time playing truant from school - wandering around London. He did, however, spend some time at the West London School of Art where he eventually taught for a while.
He soon left this position though, and began to earn through his artistic abilities, by drawing animals and country scenes. From the age of 20, when his father died he was left to support his mother and sisters. At the age of 23 he married Emily Richardson, his sisters' governess and 10 years his senior. Sadly, Emily soon contracted cancer and was to die three years later, but it was during his time nursing her that Louis found his artistic niche. He would teach their cat tricks to amuse his wife and eventually began to draw sketches of it.
In Christmas 1886 Wain had pictures of anthropomorphised cats published in the Illustrated London News. At this stage they were still on all fours and without human expression, but they were engaged in speech making, holding balls and the like. Later on, his cats began to walk upright, visit the opera or go fishing.
Following a trip to New York, during which his mother died, Louis began to suffer from schizophrenia - coincidentally, his popularity began to fade. In 1923, he found himself in the paupers' ward of a Metropolitan asylum but was rescued from here following a report in the Times. He eventually ended up in the Napsbury Hospital near St Albans where he died in 1939.
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