LOUIS WAIN (1860-1939) Biography
Kaleidoscope Cats 8: Paisley Pattern (?Cat’s Head Form) (England, c.1886 - c.1939)
Not for SaleColoured pencil on paper
Dimensions
22.50cm high
17.50cm wide
(6.89 inches wide)
Description / Expertise
The remaining pictures in the Kaleidoscope Cats ‘sequence’ are also based on Paisley or Kashmiri shawl motifs. Wain’s family was associated with textiles, and he clearly knew this pattern well. He drew it often when he was in Napsbury Hospital. A skillful draughtsman even in his declining years, he worked out the symmetrical pattern on a square grid background, a principal of design which is the exact opposite of ‘disintegration’.The fifth and sixth pictures are the most richly exotic of all, suggesting that he intended to create designs of truly oriental appearance. It is even possible that the three gouche paintings date from a much earlier period than the coloured pencil drawings made in Napsbury, and were made for a commercial project of some kind. At any rate they are highly sophisticated, and far from showing Wain’s mental deterioration, they show only that his artistic skills were fully intact.
It is doubtful whether the final picture is intended to represent a cat at all. There are other surviving examples of purely abstract paisley designs which he drew in Napsbury, with no hint of cat in them.
