A celebration of Louis Wain’s Cats at Brent Museum

An exhibition of cat illustrations by Louis Wain (1860-1939) has recently opened at Brent Museum, Willesden Green Library Centre, London, NW10. A visit is highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of Wain, cats or the art of anthropomorphism! Wain is one of Brent’s most famous artists, having lived in the local area in the early twentieth century with his sisters and mother in a house on Brondesbury Road.

The Wellcome Library’s Archives and Manuscripts department has contributed to the exhibition two drawings, which originate from the papers of Noel Gordon Harris (1897-1963), presented to the Library in 1985. Harris was a specialist in psychological medicine and early on in his career was appointed to a position at Springfield Mental Hospital, Tooting, South West London. At this time Louis Wain was a patient at the hospital, having been admitted to the pauper ward in 1924, following bouts of erratic and occasionally violent behaviour. It is likely that the two drawings came into Harris’s possession some time between then and shortly after Wain was moved to Bethlem Royal Hospital, South London, around 1925. It is known that Wain often gave away his drawings, which he produced in vast quantities, to friends and acquaintances.

Although such a notion can only be purely speculative, one of the Wellcome drawings, of a rather spiky looking cat, seems to make a dig at the medics who were treating him, captioned by him “Caught! Keep your mouth shut, and let me open your mind for you”. Of course there have been numerous interpretations of Wain’s drawings in the context of understanding his mental health problems. Once considered schizophrenic, more recently he has been thought to have had Asperger’s syndrome and Visual agnosia, which would certainly go some way in explaining his obsessive drawing of cats and the intricate patterns of some of his more ‘kaleidoscopic’ cat drawings.

Further examples of the breadth of Wain’s cat images are held by the Paintings, Prints and Drawings collection of the Wellcome Library, comprising two ‘conventional’ humorous images and two ‘serious’ highly patterned images. It is easy to be unnerved by the ‘mad staring eyes’ of the latter cat image, but on the other hand some people may find the whole notion of cats singing, playing cricket or tobogganing much stranger! Whatever our opinions, the therapeutic value of art for patients in medical settings has gained wide credence since the 20th century. The Wellcome Library continues to collect primary and secondary sources on patient art and art in mental illness, two notable examples can be found in the archives of Rudolph K. Freudenberg [PP/RKF] and a soon to be catalogued small collection of Edward Adamson, pioneer of art therapy.

If the exhibition in NW10 wets your appetite then swiftly turn your attention to the Chris Beetles Gallery and the Bethlem Art and History Collections Trust. The Brent Museum exhibition consists chiefly of works loaned by these two organisations.

“Communicating Through Cats: The Art and Mind of Louis Wain”, Brent Museum, runs until 29th October 2011. A series of free exhibition related events will include a talk by Wain biographer Rodney Dale on 23 June.

Images:
- Drawing of cat by Louis Wain, from papers of Noel Gordon Harris (PP/NGH/58)
- A cat in "gothic" style. Gouache by Louis Wain, 1925/1939 (Wellcome Library no. 38887i)

Author: Amanda Engineer

Van Gogh

On this day in 1890 Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide using a gun he had previously brandished at the doctor treating his increasingly difficult mental state - Paul Ferdinand Gachet. Gachet had encouraged Van Gogh to create an etching and allowed him to use his personal press (Gachet was a keen artist also). It remained Van Gogh's only etching and now resides in the Medicine Man Gallery at the Wellcome Collection.

This poignant work silently records the relationship between not only doctor and patient but also two individuals who used art as both a means of expression and a therapy. The modestly sized etching is accompanied by three audio commentaries. One of these proposes that Van Gogh's condition was typical of what we now call Bipolar Disorder. For a full account of Captain Johnston-Saint (Sir Henry Wellcome's agent) and the acquisition of this unique creation see the article by Gertude Prescott in Medical History

Rita Simon 1921-2008

Rita Mary Simon died on 4 May 2008. Born in 1921, she was one of the leading figures in the profession of Art Therapy in the UK and internationally. Her entry into the profession in 1942 was due to the unconventional Adlerian psychoanalyst Joshua Bierer, who was trying to find new kinds of interaction between the analyst and the person being analysed, and thought that art-production might be a good linking activity. Finding she had a talent to realize the patients' unused skills and imagination, she was soon taking on a similar role for the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, for medical consultants and for psychiatrists of different schools. In the 1950s and again from 1969 to 1984, she lived in Northern Ireland and introduced art therapy as a constituent of the social and psychiatric services, was one of the founder members in 1986 of NIGAT (the Northern Ireland Group for Art as Therapy) and was also a founder member of the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT).

On her return to England in the 1960s she introduced art therapy at the Cheadle Royal Astell Day Hospital, Cheshire. From 1975 to 1983 she provided regular short residential courses in art therapy through Queen's University Belfast and through evening classes at Belfast Metropolitan College. She ran small art-therapy groups such as a children's art group in a disturbed and violent suburb of Belfast. Between 1975 and 1995 she published two books and 18 papers. Her archive of paintings is preserved in the Wellcome Library, where it has its own webpage and catalogue record and other works are in NIGAT's archive.

Her life is now celebrated in an illustrated colour issue of NIGAT's newsletter. It includes photographs of Rita Simon, a biography of her by Eileen McCourt and Alice Graham, memories of her by friends and family, some of her own poems and paintings, and a vivid array of personalia.

Newsletter: In memory of Rita M. Simon, published by Northern Ireland Group for Art as Therapy (http://www.nigat.org/), November 2008, is available for GBP3.66 including postage from Ceri McKervill, NIGAT Treasurer, 1 Brocklamont Park, Old Galgorm Road, Ballymena, Co. Antrim., BT42 1AS (Email: c.j.mckervill@btinternet.com).