A cat compendium : the worlds of Louis Wain

Louis Wain drew cats: cats playing poker, boxing, playing cricket - doing almost any human activity, in fact.

His pictures are widely available today as decorative motifs and popular prints, but in his day the man dubbed 'the Hogarth of cat life' was a celebrity who sold thousands of drawings and paintings to an insatiable public. From humble beginnings Wain became a hugely successful popular artist, creating the Louis Wain Annual series and the first ever animated cat character, later acknowledged as the inspiration for Mickey Mouse.

But after he lost his fortune, he lost his mind. He ended up in a provincial asylum, sketching psychedelic cats that were more fiend-like than feline.