Louis William Wain

Gouache watercolor. Original design of a crazed feline, created when he was at Napsbury Hospital near St. Albans in Hertfordshire. Measures 7-1/4 x 5 inches.

Christie’s South Kensington, January 1997, via Chris Beetles.

Louis Wain (1860–1939) was an English illustrator best known internationally for his depiction of anthropomorphic cats and kittens. Wain’s later style of “kaleidoscope” cats, as opposed to his earlier cutesy anthropomorphized cats, is due to his mental malady, and created during his final years in an asylum, a result of his experimentation in drawing patterns of cats. He still kept on producing conventional cat pictures up to the end of his life.