Louis Wain

Louis Wain - Schizophrenic Cat Artist

Louis Wain (5 August 1860–4 July 1939) was the best-known English artist for his drawings, which consistently featured large-eyed cats and kittens anthropomorphized. He may have suffered from schizophrenia in his later years (although this claim is widely disputed among many specialists if that is true or not), which some psychiatrists believe can be seen in his works.

Louis William Wain was born in Clerkenwell, London, on 5 August 1860. His father was an embroiderer and a cloth trader; his mother was French. He was the first of six kids, and the only male. None of his 5 sisters have ever dated. His youngest sister was listed as insane at the age of thirty, and was committed to asylum. The remaining sisters lived with their mother for lifetime as did Louis for most of his life.

Wain was raised with a cleft lip, and the doctor ordered his parents not to send him to school or teach until he was twelve. He was often truant from school as a teenager, and spent much of his childhood roaming around London. Louis studied at the West London School of Art after this period, and eventually became a teacher there for a short time. At the age of 20, after his father's death, Wain was left behind to support his mother and his five sisters.

Wain soon abandoned his teaching position to become a freelance artist, and he achieved considerable success in this capacity. He specialized in drawing animals and country scenes and wrote for several newspapers, including the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, where he spent four years, and The Illustrated London News, which began in 1886. Wain's work through the 1880s included detailed illustrations of English country houses and estates, along with livestock that he was commissioned to draw at agricultural shows. His research at this period included a wide variety of animals, and throughout his lifetime he retained his capacity to draw creatures of all kinds. He hoped to make a living by drawing portraits of dogs at one point.

Wain's cats began walking upright in subsequent years, smiling broadly, and using other exaggerated facial expressions, and wearing sophisticated, contemporary clothing. Illustrations of Wain showed cats playing musical instruments, drinking tea, playing cards, fishing, smoking, and enjoying an opera night out. Such anthropomorphic animal portrayals were very popular in Victorian England and were frequently found in prints, greeting cards and satirical illustrations such as John Tenniel's.

Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite which is excreted by cats in their faeces, may have precipitated the development of Wain's schizophrenia. The hypothesis that toxoplasmosis can cause schizophrenia is the subject of ongoing research although the theory's roots can be traced back to 1953.

After his sisters were no longer able to cope with his unpredictable and sometimes violent behaviour, in 1924 he was finally committed to a pauper ward at Springfield Mental Hospital in Tooting. He was found there a year later, and his circumstances were widely publicized, leading to appeals from people such as H. G. Wells, and the Prime Minister's personal intervention. Wain was moved to the Southwark Bethlem Royal Hospital, and again to the Napsbury Hospital near St Albans in Hertfordshire, north of London, in 1930.

This house, with a garden and colony of cats, was relatively pleasant and he lived his final 15 years there in peace. While he was becoming more and more deluded, his unpredictable mood swings subsided, and he kept drawing for pleasure. His work from this period is marked by bright colors, flowers and intricate and abstract patterns, although he remained the same as his primary subject. He is buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green, London in the grave of his father.

Dr. Michael Fitzgerald rejects the schizophrenia argument, suggesting that Wain had Asperger's syndrome (AS) more likely. Of particular note, Fitzgerald suggests that while Wain's art took on a more abstract nature as he grew older, it did not weaken his talent and ability as a painter, as one would expect from a person with schizophrenia.

In addition, his painting demonstrates elements of visual agnosia. If Wain had visual agnosia, it could have simply expressed itself as an excessive attention to detail.