By Erica Crompton
To purchase your own Outsider Art like the one above, visit leading specialist Henry Boxer Gallery at www.outsiderart.co.uk.
Bright, beguiling and saccharine are all words that can be associated
with this month’s cover kitty, and the illustrations of cats, printed in this
month’s animal special. Known as the Mona Lisa of Asylum Art, Louis Wain
is remembered for his kaleidoscopic cats which can be bought today from
the Henry Boxer Gallery, and viewed at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind,
home to the mental asylum Wain was once committed. Louis Wain was
born on 5 August 1860. He studied at the West London School of Art,
and began his career as an art journalist, drawing many different subjects.
From the 1880s until the outbreak of the first world war, the ‘Louis Wain
cat’ was hugely popular and more recently immortalised in The Electrical
Life of Louis Wain, a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Despite his fame
Wain never made much money, being highly impractical in business
matters, and during the war he began to suffer real poverty. Always known
as being somewhat eccentric, he now began to develop signs of
schizophrenia. Previously a mild and gentle man, he became
increasingly suspicious, abusive, and occasionally even violent towards his
sisters with whom he lived. Eventually, in June 1924, he was certified insane
and committed to Springfield Hospital (the former Surrey County
Asylum) at Tooting. ‘Discovered’ here the following year, he was transferred to Bethlem Hospital after a campaign by admirers of his work,
including the Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald. Macdonald later arranged
for the Wain sisters to receive a small Civil List pension in recognition of
their brother’s services to popular art. In 1930 Louis Wain was transferred
to Napsbury Hospital, near St Albans. He continued drawing until near the
end of his life, and exhibitions of his work were held in London in 1931
and 1937, as well as a memorial exhibition shortly after 4 July 1939, when
he drew his last breathe.
For more information visit museumofthemind.org.uk or to purchase your own Outsider
Art visit leading specialist Henry Boxer Gallery at www.outsiderart.co.uk.
