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Edited by Peter Haining
Louis Wain drew cats: cats playing poker, boxing, playing
cricket — doing almost any human activity, in fact. His
pictures are widely available today as decorative motifs and
popular prints, but in his day the man dubbed ‘the Hogarth
of cat life’ was a celebrity who sold thousands of drawings
and paintings to an insatiable public.
From humble beginnings Wain became a hugely successful popular
artist, creating the Louis Wain Annual series and the
first ever animated cat character, later acknowledged as the
inspiration for Mickey Mouse. But after he lost his fortune,
he lost his mind. He ended up in a provincial asylum, sketching
psychedelic cats that were more fiend-like than feline.
When his fate was discovered in 1925, the Royal Family and
the Prime Minister joined a national campaign to rescue Wain.
The artist never entirely recovered his health, but was eventually
moved to a better home, where he continued to draw and paint
almost until his death in 1939.
With a wealth of Wain’s most famous drawings, as well
as rare writings by and about the artist, A Cat Compendium
is an ideal book for both Wain fans and cat-lovers in general.
• Original Wain Annuals now change hands for hundreds
of pounds each
• Almost no other books on Wain are available
• Contains sixty of Wain’s best-loved illustrations
• Includes an in-depth biographical study by Peter Haining
• Features rare poems, articles and essays by and about
Wain
• Is ideal for collectors of graphic art and feline ephemera
‘Louis Wain has made the cat his own. He invented
a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world.’ —
H.G. Wells |
