It was a picture of bullfinches on laurel bushes, given the wrong title of "Robins Breakfast". In December 1881, Wain's first drawing to be published appeared in the Christmas 1881 issue of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. : 10-14 Artistic career An early Louis Wain caricature, featuring pugs rather than cats He then did a course at the West London School of Art and was taken on as an assistant master at the school. From 1873 to 1876 he attended St Joseph's Academy in Kennington, a Catholic school (the Wain family was Catholic). He was sent first to Orchard Street Foundation School in South Hackney but spent much of his time playing truant and wandering around London, attending lectures at the Royal Polytechnic Institution or going on insect-hunting expeditions into the countryside. Wain was born with a cleft lip and as a child was not in good health he did not attend school until he was ten. His birth was followed by that of Caroline in 1862, Josephine in 1864, a still-born boy in 1866, Claire in 1868 and Felicie and Marie in 1871. Wain was the first child and only surviving boy in the family. Wain's maternal grandfather, Louis Boiteux, was an artist. His father, William Matthew Wain (1825–1880), was a textile trader, living in London but originally from Leek, Staffordshire his mother, Julie Felicie Boiteux (1833–1910), was a church embroiderer from a family of French origin. Wain was born on 5 August 1860 in Clerkenwell in London. In spite of his popularity and prolific output, Wain did not become wealthy, possibly because he sold his work cheaply and relinquished copyright, and also because he supported his mother and five sisters.Įarly life A realistically drawn cat from early in Wain's career Drawing by Louis Wain titled 'Caught! Keep your mouth shut and let me open your mind for you' ![]() His work also appeared on postcards and advertising, and he made brief ventures into ceramics and animated cartoons. Wain produced hundreds of drawings and paintings a year for periodicals and books, including Louis Wain's Annual which ran from 1901 to 1921. Some of his later abstract paintings have been cited as precursors of psychedelic art. Seven years later, he was certified as insane and spent the remaining fifteen years of his life in mental hospitals, where he continued to draw and paint. In 1890 he moved to the Kent coast with his mother and five sisters, and, except for three years spent in New York, remained there until the family returned to London in 1917. He married in 1884 but was widowed three years later. ![]() In 1881 he sold his first drawing and the following year gave up his teaching position to become a full-time illustrator. Louis William Wain (5 August 1860 – 4 July 1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised large-eyed cats and kittens.
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