Louis Wain
Louis William Wayne (1860 - 1939) is an English painter known for his depictions of anthropomorphic cats. Wayne had a cat named Peter, named after Emperor Peter the Great. Louis trained him to sit in front of a book with glasses as if he was reading, and to carry out other simple commands. He did this in order to entertain his dying wife. It was then that he began to sketch with Peter, which became the basis of his future popularity.
Later he painted up to six hundred cats a year. Postcards with his cats were popular then, and now they have become an object of hunting for collectors. Currently, their cost can be measured in tens of thousands of dollars. Wayne not only drew cats, he was in all kinds of charities that protect them and even became the president of the English National Cat Club.
But the artist's life was not joyful and cloudless. He was supposed to support his mother and five sisters, in addition, Louis was extremely trusting and imprudent: he never bargained, did not care about copyrights.
Louis Wayne was considered a charming but strange person. Gradually, his eccentricity turned into a serious illness, the last years of his life Louis suffered from schizophrenia. When the press learned that he was in an asylum, many influential people, including H.G. Wells and the British Prime Minister, facilitated his transfer to Napsbury Hospital, where there was a garden and a whole cat nursery, and Wayne spent his last years there. peacefully. He continued to paint for his own pleasure, the works of this period are characterized by bright colors, complex abstract backgrounds, although the main theme - cats - remained unchanged for a long time until it was finally replaced by fractal-like patterns.
