eventual descent into madness. Born August 5, 1860, Wain began his artistic career as a teen. During his early twenties he worked as a freelancer of modest reputation. Then his wife, Emily, began a long struggle with cancer, which would eventually claim her life. Since she took great solace from their black and white cat, Peter, Wain taught him tricks, such as wearing spectacles. Then he started drawing the cat in more fanciful situations, and a new career was born. “To him properly belongs the foundation of my career, the developments of my initial efforts, and the establishing of my work,” he wrote.
For years thereafter, Peter would be seen again and again in his master’s renderings. In 1886, Wain drew a massive piece called A Kitten’s Christmas Party for the Illustrated London News . It wonhim wide acclaim, and soon his pictures of upright-walking, clothes-wearing cats were everywhere. It’s hard to overestimate Wain’s popularity. His felines graced everything from greeting cards to children’s books to the Louis Wain Annual , a magazine devoted to his caricatures. He was to cats what Thomas Kinkade is to cottages.
Sadly, though the artist’s work is still remembered today, it is for a darker reason. Late in life Wain developed schizophrenia and spent almost two decades confined to mental hospitals before his death in 1939. He painted until the end, unwittingly creating a disturbing record of his descent into madness. As his schizophrenia took hold, the clothes-wearing cats disappeared. Instead Wain created ever more abstract-looking feline portraits, with the subjects rendered in bright, almost psychedelic colors and sporting surprised, even terrified, expressions. In his final works—basically collections of small, geometric shapes—the “cats” are merely complex kaleidoscopic patterns. And yet, even toward the end, the poor mad artist occasionally created portraits that looked like Peter, the cat who started it all.
MASTER’S CAT
THE CAT WHO CHARMED
THE DICKENS OUT OF DICKENS
English novelist Charles Dickens was a great fan of dogs and birds—so fond, in fact, that for years cats were banned from his London household, lest they make off with his feathered friends. But all that changed when Dickens’s daughter, Mamie, received a white kitten as a gift. The cat was christened William. Shortly thereafter, after giving birth to kittens, she was rechristened Williamina.
The feline family was supposed to stay in a box in the kitchen. But Williamina had other plans. One by one she carried her kittens into Dickens’s study and deposited them in a corner. Dickens told his daughter that they couldn’t stay and had her take them back to the kitchen. But Williamina brought them back. Mamie removed them again, only to have the mother once more laboriously haul them into the study. Only this time she laid them directly at the great man’s feet and then stared at him imploringly, as if begging permission to stay.
It was finally granted, and the kittens enjoyed the privilege of climbing up the curtains and scampering across Dickens’s desk as he tried to work. When they were old enough, all were found good homes—except for a single deaf kitten.Because it could never hear its name, it was never given one. Instead he was known simply as “the master’s cat.” And indeed he was. He followed Dickens like a dog throughout the house and would sit by him at his desk as he wrote.
Not that the master’s cat didn’t demand a certain level of attention from the master. One night, when the rest of his family went out to attend a ball, Dickens sat in his study by a candle, engrossed in a book. The cat, as usual, was at his side. Suddenly the candle flickered out. Dickens, too engrossed in his reading to notice the cause, relit the candle and continued. He also gave a passing pat on the head to his cat, who stared at him longingly.
A minute or two later, the candle flickered again. Dickens looked up just in
For years thereafter, Peter would be seen again and again in his master’s renderings. In 1886, Wain drew a massive piece called A Kitten’s Christmas Party for the Illustrated London News . It wonhim wide acclaim, and soon his pictures of upright-walking, clothes-wearing cats were everywhere. It’s hard to overestimate Wain’s popularity. His felines graced everything from greeting cards to children’s books to the Louis Wain Annual , a magazine devoted to his caricatures. He was to cats what Thomas Kinkade is to cottages.
Sadly, though the artist’s work is still remembered today, it is for a darker reason. Late in life Wain developed schizophrenia and spent almost two decades confined to mental hospitals before his death in 1939. He painted until the end, unwittingly creating a disturbing record of his descent into madness. As his schizophrenia took hold, the clothes-wearing cats disappeared. Instead Wain created ever more abstract-looking feline portraits, with the subjects rendered in bright, almost psychedelic colors and sporting surprised, even terrified, expressions. In his final works—basically collections of small, geometric shapes—the “cats” are merely complex kaleidoscopic patterns. And yet, even toward the end, the poor mad artist occasionally created portraits that looked like Peter, the cat who started it all.
MASTER’S CAT
THE CAT WHO CHARMED
THE DICKENS OUT OF DICKENS
English novelist Charles Dickens was a great fan of dogs and birds—so fond, in fact, that for years cats were banned from his London household, lest they make off with his feathered friends. But all that changed when Dickens’s daughter, Mamie, received a white kitten as a gift. The cat was christened William. Shortly thereafter, after giving birth to kittens, she was rechristened Williamina.
The feline family was supposed to stay in a box in the kitchen. But Williamina had other plans. One by one she carried her kittens into Dickens’s study and deposited them in a corner. Dickens told his daughter that they couldn’t stay and had her take them back to the kitchen. But Williamina brought them back. Mamie removed them again, only to have the mother once more laboriously haul them into the study. Only this time she laid them directly at the great man’s feet and then stared at him imploringly, as if begging permission to stay.
It was finally granted, and the kittens enjoyed the privilege of climbing up the curtains and scampering across Dickens’s desk as he tried to work. When they were old enough, all were found good homes—except for a single deaf kitten.Because it could never hear its name, it was never given one. Instead he was known simply as “the master’s cat.” And indeed he was. He followed Dickens like a dog throughout the house and would sit by him at his desk as he wrote.
Not that the master’s cat didn’t demand a certain level of attention from the master. One night, when the rest of his family went out to attend a ball, Dickens sat in his study by a candle, engrossed in a book. The cat, as usual, was at his side. Suddenly the candle flickered out. Dickens, too engrossed in his reading to notice the cause, relit the candle and continued. He also gave a passing pat on the head to his cat, who stared at him longingly.
A minute or two later, the candle flickered again. Dickens looked up just in
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