Archive item of the month: August 2022

Louis William Wain (5 August 1860 – 4 July 1939)

“I’m going to meow on the trumpet tonight!”.  Pencil drawing by Louis Wain; undated, but the second item in an autograph album initially dated August 1901 and immediately preceding four musical quotations, by Henry Wood and others, dated September 1901.  From an album of autographs collected by John Solomon over the period 1901-1906 and donated by Solomon on 6 August 1950. 

Louis Wain is well-known for his many hundreds of drawings or large-eyed felines. This image from the autograph book of the trumpeter John Jacob Solomon (1856-1953), and obviously written for him given the artist’s title for the drawing, does not appear to make any particular physical or emotional observation about Solomon, unlike many of Wain’s artistic commentaries on human behaviour. Wain was president of the National Cat Club from 1891. Wain was later, for mental health reasons, admitted to an asylum. Near his grave in Kensal Green Roman Catholic cemetery is the grave of the humorous artist Phil May (1864-1903) who drew for Punch Magazine and had a publication of images of singers entitled Songs and their Singers, from ‘Punch’ (London, Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., 1898). 

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