“A whole cat world”: Domesticity, Consumerism, and Insanity in Cat Paintings of Louis Wain
“A whole cat world”: Domesticity, Consumerism, and Insanity in Cat Paintings of Louis Wain

Author(s): Dorota Babilas
Subject(s): Cultural history, 18th Century, 19th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: cats; Louis Wain; mental health; painting; Victorian culture
Summary/Abstract: Before being recalled from near-oblivion by the recent film 'The Electrical Life of Louis Wain' (dir. Will Sharpe, 2021), the public’s perception of the art of Louis William Wain (1860–1939) had largely been reduced to a footnote in medical articles on the effects of schizophrenia on human creativity. His quirky, anthropomorphized images of cats involved in a wide range of human activities, as well as his later psychedelic drawings of cat-like fractal designs, were explained as evidence of Wain’s declining mental health, finally resulting in his permanent hospitalization in the last years of his life. On the other hand, during the time of his meteoric rise to fame in late-Victorian and Edwardian England, Wain was credited by his enthusiasts for single-handedly changing the entire nation’s appreciation of cats and elevating the felines’ status from the position of lowly rodent-catchers to pampered family pets. The chapter attempts to argue that both these extreme views are probably ungrounded. There is no direct evidence of the decline in Wain’s skill and style as his mental illness deepened. Moreover, while his work contributed to promoting cats, it also capitalized on the pre-existing wave of cat fancy, well visible in British art and culture in the nineteenth century.

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