LOUIS WAIN CREATOR OF A “CAT WORLD”

During the late-19th and early-20th centuries, few artists enjoyed the kind of widespread popularity that Louis Wain did. He was a household name and his works could be found everywhere. His speciality – anthropomorphic cats and kittens with oversized eyes doing human activities from singing songs to playing sports –adorned postcards, calendars, annuals and biscuit tins. Rare was the household that didn’t possess at least one example of Wain’s work, and many people were not content unless they had a collection of his feline-based art, including such eminent figures as the novelist HG Wells and the prime minister Stanley Baldwin. Both were great champions of Wain, in particular when the artist was discovered to have been committed to a pauper’s asylum in his later years.

That Wain’s life didn’t trace the kind of trajectory to be expected given the heights of his popularity makes him a fascinating character to study. He is the subject of a new film, , which offers a portrait of the artist as a brilliant but tortured soul. The film’s lead, Benedict Cumberbatch, found multiple layers to Wain’s personality, writing in his foreword to a newthat “to be Louis felt like tuning in to a perpetual voice, sometimes quiet and shy, sometimes channelled into a singular focus, and at other times openly confrontational, a voice saying to the world, ‘But don’t you see?!’”