Louis Wain, a name that might seem rather unfamiliar today but was one of Britain’s most known artists in the 20th century. Though often dismissed as the ‘crazy cat artist’, his story is one of love, loss, and an attempt to escape from the torments of his own mind.
Wain was an unconventional man who adored cats, captivating the public with his charming and often witty illustrations of anthropomorphised whisker friends playing golf, drinking tea, wearing suits, and going to the opera. He humanized cats at a time when, unlike today, cats were seen as pests. His creations popularized the possibility of having cats as pets.
He became uniquely aware of the energy of cats upon witnessing how much comfort his cat Peter had brought to his wife Emily during her fight with cancer before succumbing in 1887, just three years into their marriage. That, along with the knowledge of the healing effect of art, after having witnessed the joy his funny illustrations of Peter would bring Emily, laid the foundation stone of his career as an artist.
Although, when the First World War hit, the demand for his work fell off. During this time, his art style also changed to a more cubic or abstract style which greatly excited him as often, even he'd be surprised by the final result.
However, having endured the worst of poverty after his father died suddenly when he was just 20 years old and he struggled with the responsibility of his mother and five unmarried sisters, then losing his wife, and living with the trauma of World War I, Wain was struggling to keep up with his mind's antics by the 1920s. He was always known for having the most out of the box imagination but the intensity of his imagination increased as his battle with depression and anxiety intensified. His increasing eccentricities led to him locking himself for hours in his room and accusing his sisters of conspiracy, maltreatment and theft. Things got so out of hand that his family ultimately had to seek professional help in 1924. That's when a doctor declared him insane, following which, Wain was admitted to an asylum and was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
In 1939, psychiatrist Dr. Walter Maclay, while on his quest to collect works of artists suffering with mental illness, came across eight pictures by Louis Wain, which he drew throughout his time in the hospital, in a shop which he then subsequently arranged in an assumed chronological order to demonstrate the progression of Wain’s Schizophrenia. Dr. Maclay drew the conclusion that as the paintings of the ‘Kaleidoscope Cats’ as they're now known as, became more disorganised, so did Wain’s mental state.
Despite the fact that there's no concrete evidence to back this ordering, the Kaleidoscope Cats became a popular visual example of the schizophrenic mind. Such was the progression of Wain’s art, from funny and witty to psychotic or disturbed.
Or perhaps, rather than representing his inner turmoil, these arts simply demonstrated a new found excitement of learning a different technique or an increasing creative expertise and confidence, or maybe these were the testament to the rapid change happening in his world.
Wain’s friend Collingwood Ingram, an ornithologist and plant collector, thought of him as “an example of the thin borderline between genius and insanity, and in his way, he was a genius”.
