Louis Wain: his life, his cat Peter and his patterned cats

Louis Wain (1860 to 1939) was an English artist whose cats walked, talked, played sport and wore clothes. This page follows his life in order: the cat Peter who led him to draw cats, his years drawing for magazines, annuals and postcards, his work for the National Cat Club, his years in hospital, and the argument over his late, patterned cats. The facts come from Bethlem Museum of the Mind, The National Archives in Britain, the Wellcome Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), and books from his own lifetime that are now free to read online. For the wider story of cats in pictures, start with the cats in art guide.

Family and training

Louis William Wain was born in London on 5 August 1860. Bethlem Museum of the Mind says his father travelled for a textile firm and his mother, who came from a French family, designed church embroideries and carpets. He studied at the West London School of Art. The National Archives says he began by drawing animals and country scenes for papers such as The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.

Money was a problem from the start. An article by the artist and curator Bryony Benge-Abbott, published by the Wellcome Collection, says his father died suddenly when Louis was 20. From then on he had to support his mother and five unmarried sisters.

Emily, Peter and the first cat pictures

The National Archives dates Wain's marriage to Emily Richardson to 1883. Emily fell ill soon afterwards. Wain began drawing their cat, Peter, to cheer her up. The Wellcome article says he made hundreds of drawings of Peter in funny poses during her illness. Emily liked them and encouraged him to publish them. She died in January 1887.

Wain later gave the cat the credit for his career. Peter had been a stray, and The National Archives quotes Wain's own words: "to him, properly, belongs the foundation of my career, the developments of my initial efforts, and the establishing of my work."

His first cat piece for The Illustrated London News, Our Cats: A Domestic History, was published in 1884. In 1886 Macmillan published Madame Tabby's Establishment, a children's story by "Kari". Its title page reads "Illustrated by L. Wain", and its list of illustrations has seven pictures. The National Archives gives the author's real name as Caroline Hughes. The same year brought his large Christmas sheet of kittens for The Illustrated London News, which our article on famous paintings of cats describes.

Peter in print

Cats named Peter appear in his work after Emily's death. The English Illustrated Magazine for 1889 to 1890 printed an article by J. E. Panton called Cats and Kittens; or, "In Defence of the Cat", with pictures by Wain. One of them is captioned as the short-haired black and white kitten "Peter". Panton writes that this kitten is square and sturdy, with more character than the two fluffy long-haired kittens in the first picture.

In 1892 G. P. Putnam's Sons published Peter, a Cat o' One Tail: His Life and Adventures in New York and London. The title page says it was "illustrated by Louis Wain (Peter's proprietor)" and "written by Charles Morley (a pal of Peter's)". It is a told story: the chapter list has Peter learning manners, getting lost, and being found with a showman called the Professor, who runs a cat and dog show.

Magazines, annuals and postcards

From the 1880s until the First World War, Bethlem says, the "Louis Wain cat" appeared in large numbers of prints, books, magazines, postcards and annuals, the gift books that come out once a year. Bethlem says his cats did every human activity, down to showing off the latest fashions at the Ascot horse races. The National Archives adds that Wain drew for newspapers, children's books and advertisers, and that his own Louis Wain Annual ran from 1901 to 1915.

The V&A in London holds a group of his original drawings and designs. The drawing for Kitten Life at the Cat Show was presented by Sir William Ingram, 1st Baronet.

A lithograph is a print made from a drawing on stone, and gouache is a thick, opaque watercolour paint. The V&A records that the 1905 nine lives series was inspired by Wain's pet cat, Peter the Great.

Wain protected some of his pictures by copyright. The National Archives holds forms he sent to the Stationers' Company in London for copyright protection, among them Cats Playing Cricket (1906) and advertising pictures for Jackson's Boots and Hats (1909) and Globe Polish (1910). Even so, he often sold drawings outright, so other people reprinted them and he earned nothing more. Bethlem says he was bad at business and never made much money.

The cat show world

Wain was also a leader among people who bred and showed cats. Frances Simpson's Book of the Cat, published in London in 1903, is a guide to the cat shows of that time, and it names him often.

Simpson says the National Cat Club was founded in 1887 with the artist Harrison Weir as president. When Weir retired, Wain was appointed, and in 1903 he "still holds the office". Her printed list of officers calls the Duchess of Bedford the club's president and Wain the president of its committee. The same list names the painter Madame Ronner as a vice-president, and our page on Henriette Ronner-Knip tells her story.

Wain judged cats too. Simpson lists him among the judges at the club's championship show at the Crystal Palace in 1902. She quotes his report on the 1900 show, where he judged the class for neutered cats. He wrote that neutered cats should be encouraged as "home" cats, and he complained that judges and exhibitors cared too much about "correct coloured eyes".

Owners valued his pictures. Simpson writes that the cat rooms of Lady Decies, a well-known breeder, had pictures by Louis Wain on the walls. She also records a supper for London's cats' meat men, the street sellers of horse meat for cats, organised by the editor of the weekly paper Our Cats with Wain's help. There were 250 guests, and 400 more applicants had to be turned away.

War, poverty and hospital

Bethlem says his cats stayed popular until the First World War began, and that during the war he became poor. The Wellcome article says demand for his work fell in those years. He tried new things, including "futurist" ceramic cats in a style close to Cubism, the art style built from flat, angular shapes, and he later wrote: "I never knew from one moment to another exactly what I was going to do."

Then his mental health broke down. Bethlem says he became suspicious, abusive and sometimes violent towards his sisters. The 1921 census, held by The National Archives, shows him living with three of his sisters in Willesden, with his job given as "artist". In June 1924 a doctor certified him insane, and he was sent to the ward for patients who could not pay at Springfield Hospital in Tooting.

In 1925 admirers found him there and raised money to move him. The sources name different famous supporters: Bethlem names the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, while The National Archives names the writer H. G. Wells and the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. One list of gifts to the Louis Wain Fund in The National Archives adds up to £231 11s. Wain moved to Bethlem Hospital in 1925 and to Napsbury Hospital, near St Albans, in May 1930. He kept drawing. Exhibitions of his work were held in London in 1931 and 1937, and he died at Napsbury on 4 July 1939, aged 78.

The argument over the patterned cats

Some of Wain's late cats are covered in bright, repeating patterns. Two small gouaches in the Wellcome Collection, both dated 1925 to 1939, show the style:

• Norman, 18.5 by 12.2 cm: a turquoise cat on a blue ground, its fur drawn as white lines that look like Gothic tracery, the carved stone patterns in the windows of medieval churches.
• Early Greek, 18.8 by 12.6 cm: a cat standing on its back legs, its body in yellow, purple and blue on a green ground with red patterns.

The words "Norman" and "Early Greek" are written in pencil on the backs of the sheets.

Two readings of pictures like these exist, and the experts do not agree.

The illness reading. In 1939 the psychiatrist Walter Maclay (1902 to 1964) found eight patterned Wain cats in a junk shop in Notting Hill, according to Bethlem and the Wellcome Collection. Maclay thought they fitted the medical ideas of his day: as Wain's mind declined, he could draw a cat less and less clearly. He arranged the eight pictures in an order to show that decline. They became known as the "Kaleidoscope Cats". The Wellcome article says a major V&A exhibition in 1972 still used the words "psychotic" and "disturbed" for his art. Some doctors still hold this view. A short summary of a conference talk, published in the journal European Psychiatry in 2014 by the psychiatrists M. Brenha and P. Teixeira, concludes that the changes in his drawing follow the course of his schizophrenia.

The experiment reading. The Wellcome article says there was no evidence for Maclay's order. Bethlem reports a talk by the psychiatrist David O'Flynn, who argues against many of the claims about the Kaleidoscope Cats. Bethlem's summary of the talk says that Wain's work did change and became more experimental, but that the pictures are hard to call "deteriorated". The Wellcome article goes further and suggests the patterns may show growing confidence and pleasure in new techniques. The National Archives puts both sides: some say the patterns show his illness, and others say they may be the result of experiment. Bethlem adds that experts also disagree on his diagnosis. The Wellcome article reports a popular modern theory that he would today be seen as autistic.

Bethlem and The National Archives agree on one point: Wain kept drawing in hospital until near the end of his life.

Louis Wain and a portrait of your own cat

Wain started with one real cat, Peter. In 1892 a book's title page called him "Peter's proprietor", the owner of the cat in the story. Other artists who made cats their main subject are covered on our pages about Steinlen's cats and Japanese cat prints.

Purrealism's Victorian Noble style dresses a cat as a well-born person of Wain's own century. The cover of this page shows a Calico Cat from the studio examples in that style. You can see more finished portraits in the gallery, or upload one photo of your own cat, up to 5 MB, in the portrait studio.