The great Louis Wain cat painter -consigned to a roadside skip

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]I've always enjoyed, uh, this man here, Louis Wain, and uh, I I I I particularly enjoy his his later paintings when these very strange blue cats turn up.

[00:00:16]And um um by that point, of course, he has gone insane and he's living in a um an asylum.

[00:00:27]And uh these um this strange journey that he had, I think, is something uh in the art world. It's a it it it's something that requires um discussion.

[00:00:43]Louis Wain and the strange journey from Cat Land to Bedlam. And there are three points that one can make. Firstly, the story of the paintings themselves.

[00:00:55]Secondly, the extraordinary life of Louis Wain. And thirdly, why Wain matters so much and why he belongs among the great eccentric and tragic artists of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The story begins not in a grand gallery, not in Christie's, not in Sotheby's, but in a skip. And it's such a charming It's such a charming story. In the BBC today, a couple walking their dog in Pembrokeshire spotted two discarded paintings and rescued them from oblivion some years ago. And now, before anyone rushes off with a crowbar and a wheelbarrow, there is a legal complication. Under English law, taking something from a skip is not always as straightforward as people imagine.

[00:01:36]The owner of the property or the skip company might still possess legal title.

[00:01:41]In strict legal terms, what appears abandoned is not necessarily abandoned.

[00:01:45]Yet, here we have one of those wonderful stories where fate intervenes. The couple took the pictures home. They hung them on the wall. They admired them.

[00:01:54]Eventually, they researched the artist.

[00:01:56]And they discovered that these cheerful feline paintings were by Louis Wain. The result, nearly 16,000 pounds at auction.

[00:02:04]Imagine the conversation. How was the dog walk? Quite productive, we found 16,000 pounds.

[00:02:11]There are hedge fund managers who would envy the rate of return, yet the money is almost the least interesting part of the story.

[00:02:19]The real story is Louis Wain himself, born in 1860 in Clerkenwell.

[00:02:25]Wain studied at the West London School of Art and later taught there. He possessed enormous talent as an illustrator and quickly became successful producing work for newspapers, magazines, and books, and then came the cats. Thousands upon thousands of cats, cats drinking tea, cats playing cricket, cats attending dinner parties, going shopping, behaving exactly like middle-class Victorians.

[00:02:50]And before Wain, cats occupied a strange place in British society. Many people viewed them primarily as mousers and working animals. After Wain, cats became companions.

[00:03:03]He helped create the modern British affection for the feline.

[00:03:08]When we see a cat treated as a family member today, as I treated my two cats, there is a small trace of Louis Wain lurking in the background. His illustrations became wildly popular.

[00:03:22]Children loved them, adults loved them, publishers loved them. The annuals sold in enormous numbers. One of the most famous examples was Louis Wain's annual including works such as for what we are about to receive, which is which is a wonderful a wonderful piece. If I if if if I can lay my hands on it, I don't know whether I can that quickly.

[00:03:42]Um but it's the the shape of the painting itself.

[00:03:48]Um the the the this is There's to what What's What's the name of that dreadful man? Um Ah, who found Christianity and couldn't find his place in the Bible. This is going to be like one of like one of those like one of those moments while while I while I try and look for look for this um for for for for for the for this picture. But I I I will continue. The The remarkable thing about Louis Wain is that the cats are funny without being cruel. Here Here we are. Ah. Um There.

[00:04:19]This is the the the the This is that wonderful picture.

[00:04:24]For what we are about to receive. And and and there's an even more and even more charming image there. And it's I I find Louis Wain's work reveals something because the cats The cats are clearly cat but there's humanity in them as well. Um Victorian humor often mocked weakness and Wain's humor celebrates personality. His cats are vain, pompous, foolish, cheerful, absurd. They're recognizably human. A cat wearing a waistcoat somehow becomes your uncle. A cat at a tea party becomes your neighbor. He's picking up a trope that was also um explored by Beatrix Potter. A cat looking offended becomes every committee member you have ever met. That was Wain's genius and success didn't bring him security. Wain was notoriously bad with money. He sold works cheaply. He failed to gain He failed to retain copyrights. Others made fortunes from his popularity while he struggled financially. And then came the dark chapter where his mental health deteriorated. For many people for many years people argued about the precise diagnosis. Some historians suggested schizophrenia.

[00:05:42]Uh there there's a film by Benedict Cumberbatch which looks at this. Others have proposed autism spectrum conditions combined with mental illness. The exact answer remains disputed. What is beyond dispute is that by the 1920s, he was seriously unwell. In 1924, he was certified insane, placed in a pauper institution.

[00:06:03]Think of that for a moment. One of Britain's most famous artists, one of the most recognizable illustrators in the country, reduced to a pauper ward.

[00:06:12]There's something deeply Victorian about that tragedy. The same society that adored his work abandoned the man.

[00:06:20]Fortunately, public figures intervened.

[00:06:23]Writers, politicians, and admirers campaigned on his behalf. Even members of the royal family became interested in his case. Eventually, he was transferred to the more pleasant surroundings of the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Now, Bethlem has given us one of the most famous words in the English language, bedlam, chaos, madness, disorder. Yet, ironically, Wain found relative peace there. He continued drawing. He continued painting. He continued imagining cats. And the strange thing about Wain's later work is that people often present it as a visual record of insanity.

[00:06:59]You You may have seen collections showing cats becoming increasingly abstract, colorful, and geometric.

[00:07:07]The popular story says they demonstrate progress the the progress of schizophrenia. The truth is more complicated.

[00:07:14]Many art historians now believe the sequence was arranged retrospectively and doesn't represent a neat chronological decline. Even so, the images remain extraordinary. Electric colors, kaleidoscopic patterns, explosions of shape. Cats transformed into almost cosmic beings.

[00:07:35]They resemble stained glass windows, psychedelic visions, and mathematical designs all at once. And looking at them feels like peering directly into another consciousness, which brings me to another to a broader question. Why are we fascinated by artists who drift into madness? The Victorian age produced several examples, perhaps most famous painter of fairies, of course, was Richard Dadd. I was going to make a TV show a few years ago about Edward Lear and Richard Dadd and somebody else, I forget who the other one was.

[00:08:10]But they were going to be three of them.

[00:08:12]Um and I think these I think these Victorian painters, Edward Lear was not mad, but he wasn't a He wasn't exactly he wasn't exactly um well uh and um and he and like like like Dadd and like Wain, he sort of lived on the fringes of society.

[00:08:38]Uh and yet his contribution was such a rich um element of of um of childhood.

[00:08:52]Uh rather like Lewis Carroll, Lewis Carroll was odd. Um Dodgson was odd and his photography is questionable.

[00:09:02]And um And and and I don't when when when I was looking into this TV show we were looking at all of these characters. Um Ha.

[00:09:13]When you come off reality TV, you get off you get offered various options.

[00:09:19]Uh but in the end, you're steered back towards reality TV and I thought, "No, I don't want to do anymore of this detestable reality TV. I'm quite happy to to do other more interesting things."

[00:09:31]But um even those seem to get shut off, which was really depressing cuz at the time I was doing um artwork for BBC shows um There there there was one by Lucy Worsley or a few by Lucy Worsley called um British History's Biggest Fibs and American History's Biggest Fibs. And um yes and and you know these these production companies all get in the way.

[00:09:58]um and you're not quite sure how how it happens but suddenly you seem shifted to one side.

[00:10:06]um But but definitely ha I wouldn't have done any more reality TV and I won't.

[00:10:13]Uh and if that's the price to pay, that's a sadness but at some point I will look again at Richard Dadd and possibly Louis Wain.

[00:10:22]And um and and and certainly I the the art world is very interesting and I and I think um the particular area of the particular area that I'm interested in working in, which is animation.

[00:10:38]Uh animation lends itself so so very so very well to uh to to being a vehicle of explanation.

[00:10:48]And so often it's become simply a vehicle for keeping children entertained. It is also extremely good at at showing um how things develop and and and and giving a tight visual of how you go from point A to point B.

[00:11:08]um And Dadd I thought Dadd is a sad man. He murdered his father during a psychotic episode and spent decades confined um in psychiatric institutions. Um but while incarcerated he painted masterpieces such as The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke and the detail there is astonishing. The imagination is limitless. The work remains among the strangest paintings ever produced in in Britain.

[00:11:41]Like Wain, Dad occupies that uncomfortable space where genius and mental illness intersect.

[00:11:48]And we're fascinated because such figures challenge our assumptions.

[00:11:54]Um and there are artists who just remain on the on the on the edge of sanity.

[00:12:01]Like like like William Blake. They force us to ask difficult questions. Does suffering create art? Or does art survive despite suffering? Was Wain great because he was ill? Or was he great because he continued creating while ill? And I strongly favor the second explanation. Mental illness destroyed much of Wain's life. It damaged his finances. It damaged his relationships. It damaged his freedom.

[00:12:27]And the achievement lies not in the illness, but in the persistence, the determination, the refusal to stop imagining. And that is why Wain still matters. Not because he was tragic. Not because he was institutionalized.

[00:12:42]Uh not because Benedict Cumberbatch played him in a film. He matters because he fundamentally altered British visual culture. He changed how people saw cats.

[00:12:52]He influenced generations of illustrators. He brought humor into everyday art. And he proved that popular art could possess genuine imagination. And he left behind images that continue to delight more than a century later. There is something wonderfully British about the entire story. Cats, eccentricity, financial incompetence, public admiration, institutional neglect, a skip, a dog walk, an unexpected fortune.

[00:13:23]If Charles Dickens had invented this plot, critics would have accused him of overdoing it, and yet it happened. Two paintings forgotten in the rubbish, a couple rescued them, an auction revealed their value. And perhaps the real treasure is not the 16,000 pounds, the real treasure is the reminder of Louis Wain himself, a man who filled Britain with cats, a man who transformed illustration, a man whose imagination survived poverty, illness, and institutionalization.

[00:13:57]A man whose work, nearly a century after his death, still has enough charm to leap out of a skip and demand to be noticed.