The schizophrenic painter of cats
Englishman Louis Wain
Louis Wain (1860-1939) was a London-born English commercial artist renowned for his delightful artworks featuring cats. Wain was incredibly prolific, creating hundreds of drawings and paintings each year for popular magazines, books, postcards, posters, and prints. By the early 1900s, it was common for homes to have at least one of his famous illustrated cat annuals, and Wain's cat posters adorned many nursery walls.
He became recognized in England as an authority on cats. He was president of the National Cat Club, judged cat competitions, and was involved in animal welfare organizations. H.G. Wells said of Wain, "He made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world."
The following are examples of his early cat artworks:
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Mental health problems and hospitalization
Wain was a soft-spoken and kind man but struggled with anxiety and depression throughout his life. Despite the widespread appeal of his artwork, his lack of business acumen often led him into financial difficulties. He long displayed quaint eccentric tendencies, having obsessive beliefs about cats, such as their fur generating electricity and their supposed habit of facing north.
By the 1920s, Wain’s mental state took a sharp decline. He grew increasingly paranoid and physically violent. In 1924, he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was admitted to a mental asylum. He spent the rest of his life in mental hospitals.
He continued to paint cats while hospitalized. However, the cats became increasingly abstract, psychedelic, and bizarre.
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What do the increasingly bizarre cat portraits mean?
There are competing theories about what the abstract cat paintings indicate.
The common narrative is these paintings are manifestations of the artist's deteriorating mental state. Contemporary psychiatrists studying schizophrenia said the paintings proved the altered state of consciousness of the disease. The obsessive detail and repeated geometric patterns of the most abstract examples are consistent with artworks by other schizophrenics.
However, an alternate perspective posits that these creations are merely innovative experiments. This is evidenced by a few of his cat paintings made early during his hospitalization that are much more traditional and realistic. The below, from 1928, is an example.
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