Laura Fusar-Poli

Stefano Damiani

English

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The Cats of Louis Wain: A Thousand Ways to DrawOne’s MindStefano Damiani, M.D., Laura Fusar-Poli, M.D.Even if it seems impossible to synthesize the evolution ofLouisWain’swork,wehave tried here to present the extremepolymorphism of his artwork. “The man who drew cats” (1)was an important witness of the phases of schizophrenia, acondition that characterized many decades of his life. Wain,born in 1860 in London, could not start school until the age of10 because of his physicalweakness. After attending theWestLondon School of Art, he started to work as an art teacherand illustrator. At age 24, he married Emily Richardson, whounfortunately was soon discovered to be affected by breastcancer. To comfort his beloved wife, Wain brought home ablack and white cat named Peter. Although Wain had neverdrawn cats before that period, they quickly became his fa-vorite subject, initially with the main purpose of sublimatingEmily’s (and probably his own) suffering. Wain soon startedto publish his drawings, with remarkable success. In 1886,the editor of the Illustrated London News commissionedWain to create a poster for themagazine: “AKittenChristmasParty.” This moment probably represented the peak of hisfame. After Emily’s death, cats became a pervasive obsessionfor Wain, who still flexibly adopted an incredible variety ofstyles, incontrast to therigidityof thesubject.However, othertragic events in his life—the death of his cat Peter and of one ofhis sisters—very likely contributed to his mental breakdown.Wain started to becomemore andmore paranoid, eventuallyexperiencing a florid and severe psychosis. After exhibitingphysical aggression toward his remaining sisters, he washospitalized in different psychiatric institutions, where heremained until his death in 1939 (2).Even if it is difficult to associate Wain’s drawings chro-nologically with the different periods of his life and hismental condition, his astonishing ability to use differ-ent techniques definitely suggests an extended range ofperceptual (or, at least, conceptual) sets within the artist’smind. These different modalities of representation definedthe strong bond between Wain’s ever-changing style andhis mental deterioration: the very expressions of his catsseem to absorb the emotional charge felt by the author, fromamore objective relation with reality to a sort of personifieddismay.Only speculations are possible about the exact link be-tween Wain’s protean artwork and the different phases ofhis schizophrenia. Nevertheless, the echoes of his burdenresonate in all his late drawings, which seem to mirror hismultiple, unconventional ways of experiencing and inter-preting the external world.AUTHOR AND ARTICLE INFORMATIONFrom the Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University ofPavia, Pavia, Italy.Send correspondence to Dr. Damiani (stefano.damiani01@ateneopv.it).Am J Psychiatry 2018; 175:315; doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17111235REFERENCES1. Dale R: Louis Wain: The Man Who Drew Cats. London, Kimber,19682. McGennis A: Louis Wain: his life, his art and his mental illness. Ir JPsychol Med 1999; 16:27–28Four drawings by Louis Wain showing the different styles he used to reproduce the same subject. (The first and fourth images are in the publicdomain in the United States. The second and third images are fromWellcome Images and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution4.0 International license.)Am J Psychiatry 175:4, April 2018 ajp.psychiatryonline.org 315IMAGES IN PSYCHIATRY

the cats of louis wain a thousand ways to draw one s mind

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