May 26, 2020 • 31 mins
If you're listening to this podcast, you definitely know about cat memes. At this point, they're almost like an internet currency all their own. But far before the days of WiFi, Reddit, nyan cat and grumpy cat alike, one man set the art world on fire with his increasingly bizarre paintings and sketches of cats. Join Ben, Noel and Casey as they welcome special guest Gabe Luzier on air (finally!) to explore the strange story of Louis Wain.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye
(00:27):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. What better way to start
off the show than to say, sometimes critics with the
best of intentions are just wrong. There's a there's a
great quotation that will come up later today with one
critic who famously said, whoever would want to see a
(00:50):
picture of a cat? You'll see why this is important later,
but right now, I'm willing to bet that there are
many people listening to the show while also checking out
some sweet, sweet memes of cats. I'm I'm Ben. I
also have a cat to Oh yeah, yeah, Mr Vankman
and just the one that shall not be named right,
(01:11):
he has many names? Uh, the Colonel Mr Jack Potts.
That's a Lynch reference. Uh. And then yeah he's got
he's got some names. No, you cohabitate with a cat
as well. I do. My name is Noel and my
cat only has two names. Uh. Came by both of
them relatively honestly got this cat through my my dear
buddy in front of the show, Frank Mulharan's parents. And uh,
(01:33):
we're not told that the cat already had a name,
so we banned it together and named him Fernando. And
then some time went by and Frank's parents are coming
for a visit and he's sort of really quickly huddled
with me and said, hey, man, in case they asked,
the cat's name is Robert. And I'm like, wait, what
the cat had a name all this time and you
didn't say anything. And the cat it has a little bobtail,
hence the name Robert. So depending on his behavior, sometimes
(01:56):
he's a Fernando and sometimes he's a Robert. Yeah, and uh,
roberta jaman if he's really in trouble, right, and you
got the whole name or cathew, So I gotta say, man.
One thing I like about our show is that we
are all fans of multiple names and aliases. Uh. There
is another person we always love to introduce at the
(02:18):
top of show, a man with a couple of extra
names himself. That's our super producer, Casey Pegram. No, Casey,
you're not gonna go for the bait uh as la bush.
I don't know what you're talking about. Been he knows, no,
he knows. He's always known. Amerta ban Omerta, all right, well,
today's episode is a doozy. This is one that came
(02:40):
to us directly from a man with many titles. You're
familiar with him if you've listened to our show before.
Our research associate, our research guru, are very own wizard
behind the curtain who we have. Finally, after weeks and
months of teasing, we've finally got the chance to have
him on air today. Ridiculous historians, Please welcome to the
(03:03):
audio stage, Gabe Lousier. Okay, Gabe, really quickly, we got
to clear this up. We some sometimes we do, Gabe Lozier.
We we tend to lean into the French and call
you ms Monsieur Lousier. Give it to us straight. Tell
us your name game. Um, it is l u z
(03:23):
I E R. And that is generally how I pronounce it,
by spelling it out, because I have no idea. Really,
I guess it's you know, if you lean into the French,
it's Lousier. Um. I do usually just spell it because
I try not to say my own name as much
as I can. Uh, my role pretty much since grade
school has been anything but loser. And we're good, all right.
(03:47):
I love it now, Gabe, you uh, you have been
a familiar presence to many of our fellow listeners for
a long time now, since since the show began. Uh,
and we're gonna have to be completely transparent with you. Uh,
time is weird for us pre quarantine. We're not a
sure how many episodes we've actually done. But fans of
(04:11):
other podcasts such as Part Time Genius by our friends
Will and Mango, Uh, they may also recognize you. You
you've worked with them in the past, is that correct? Uh, yeah,
that's right. I hooked up with them back in their
Mental Floss days and did some freelancing for that, and
when they made the jump to podcasts, they brought me
on board as their research guy, and uh yeah, I've
(04:32):
been doing that ever since with them and do a
little work on Next Question with Katie Curic too. But
uh yeah, part Time Genius and Ridiculous History, those are
kind of my bread and butter at this point, and
the rest is podcast history, my friend. Uh, that's how
we like to refer to to what we do here,
a ridiculous history and we couldn't do without you, and
you had some big shoes to fill two with Christopher
(04:53):
haciotis who I always say is here in spirit because
he was kind of our first research associate slash Guru
and his spirit lives on and you have truly picked
up that mantle and carried it with a plum my friends,
so we we appreciate you so very much, as do
the ridiculous historians out there in podcast land. Well, thanks guys. Yeah,
(05:13):
I always ask myself what would Chris do when I
pick a topic? And uh, Christopher sends his blessing as well. Um,
we have done our best to uh to make sure
that our nemesses. We have a couple of nemessies on
the show game. We just want to be clear with
you about that, to make sure that they don't make
an appearance on today's episode. But honestly, we don't know
(05:35):
how it goes every time we're on on the mic,
so so be Warren. There may be a quister, there
may not. We don't know for sure, but we are.
We were talking a little bit off air before we
started rolling today and you have some very close personal
ties with today's topic, which we're finally getting around to
(05:58):
today's topic, uh, which is something that might surprise a
lot of people to learn. The artistic obsession with cats
or even dare we say, the mimetic obsession with cats
uh predates the Internet and in the West we can
trace some of this to like one guy. Yeah, that's right.
(06:20):
I mean he's kind of the father of the cat
meme about a hundred years before you know, memes or
the Internet even existed. And uh yeah, I mean I'm
obviously a cat I myself. I work in podcasting off
Mike primarily, so yeah, definitely a cat guy. This is
the most prolific cap artist in history, I would say, Um,
I feel pretty confident in that. And of course his
(06:43):
name is Lewis Wayne, and he's a British nineteenth century
uh artist, cat artist specifically. Yeah. Now that sounds hyperbolic,
but as we are soon to learn, that superlative is earned.
You'll recognize even if you don't know the name Louis Wayne,
you have we guarantee you seeing some of his work.
(07:08):
Maybe maybe let's learn a little bit about his early life,
how he became uh the father of the cat meme.
Uh know, when when does his story really start? Would
you say? Well, it starts on day one and and
and Clerkinwell, London, on the fifth of August of eighteen sixty.
He was born to Um, a textile entrepreneur who was
(07:33):
his father, and his mother was French and her name
was Felicia, which is a name that I love to
say out loud because it rolls off the tongue in
a very feline kind of way. Uh. And Louis Um
was was not alone. He was one of six children
and the only boy, which I can't personally relate to.
And my father was the middle child among like five sisters.
(07:56):
And it is a tough road to ho my friend.
And let me tell you, he definitely, uh did not
come away from that situation let's say, completely sane. Yeah
that that's kind of putting it mildly, i'd say, but uh, yeah,
I mean you mentioned that his father was in the
textile business, and it actually goes much further than that.
(08:19):
Like his father was a traveling textile salesman, but his
maternal grandfather, so his mom's dad, was a tapestry designer himself.
And actually his mother was a designer of like Turkish
style carpet patterns. So this guy grew up surrounded by
lots of color and patterns. It was just kind of
(08:40):
ingrained him in from an early age. Uh, not just
carpet and textile but also wallpaper patterns. It was everywhere,
and it really shows up particularly in his later art,
which we'll get to later. But uh, yeah, this was
a guy who came from an artist family. Yeah, and
it's interesting because he was only sort of a sponge
(09:01):
for these very visual aesthetics. And we know that he was,
um not considered a prodigy in his early years of schooling. Right.
No one's like, whoa, look at all the math this
guy is doing. He's like a math doctor or something.
But he was. He was already exhibiting at a young
(09:22):
age talent and music and sports, and his aesthetic talents
led him to a student career studying at the West
London School of Art. There's a great there's there's a
great article that you pulled gave from artsy dot net
that talks a little bit about his career in context
(09:45):
of great cultural shifts. Right, so we see in his
career that you know, a micro cosmic look at the
shift from Victorian to Edwardian eras. And what I thought
was interesting about this is it it kind of provided
the audience that he would later find as well. So
(10:05):
his So it's interesting that the audience for his art
was being created almost at the same time that his
artistic voice was coming into its own. Would you agree
with that. Oh, yeah, that's that's totally true. I mean
he was coming up in it was kind of post
industrial Revolution, pre World War One, so you know in England,
(10:27):
the middle class and upper class especially it was becoming
the leisure class. They had a lot more time on
their hands, they had a lot more opportunities for diversion,
and uh yeah, he kind of leaned into that with
his art, particularly in the early days. A lot of
his cats would be drawn sort of taking part in
those activities, whether they're boating or having tea parties or
(10:49):
you know, playing cricket or croquet. All of this stuff
was very much of the era, and it was interest
that he had himself too. I mean, despite being kind
of an eccentric I person, he was also very athletic
and outgoing in that regard. He was a sporty guy
as well as an arty guy, which is not always
the case. Yeah, and it's it's funny because it's all
(11:11):
of these things. But just like you know with cats,
like you might see one where cats playing a trombone
or a cello or something like that. Uh, and just
doing human stuff before this idea of anthropomorphized uh, you know,
animals with celebrity voices became a thing. You know, like
he really was on the cutting edge as out there
is this must have seemed at the time, and I'm
(11:32):
sure delightful too many. Um it's now something that we
just totally take for granted beyond cat mean just in
terms of like, you know, Disney movies, like early Disney
movies and the idea of talking animals doing human things
and wearing human clothes. Right, Yeah, definitely, it was still
novel at the time what he was doing, and that's
why people kind of gravitated towards it. I don't think
they really knew how strange the man behind the art was,
(11:55):
but at the time it didn't really matter. You know,
he found fame anyway, just kind of through capturing the
spirit of the era and for whatever reason, channeling it
in Two Cats. Yeah, and we do have to say, um,
you know, we should be grateful today in pandemic aside
to have his art, because he was very close to
(12:17):
just being a musician. I don't mean to say just
being a musician. I'm sure he would have found his voice,
but but he was very close to not pursuing a
career in painting. There's an interesting confluence of events here,
one amazing and one quite tragic. They happen in his
(12:40):
early twenties and just the space of two years. So
when he is twenty years old, his father passes away.
His mother will eventually go on to try to run
the weighing family textile business, but she becomes financially insolvent,
she goes bankrupt. And while this, you know, this tremendous,
(13:02):
profound family tragedy is occurring, and while he's recovering or
dealing with that grief, just a year later, when he's
twenty one years old, in one and he's switched to
art by now, he meets and secures an agreement with
his first patron, the editor of the Illustrated London News,
a guy named Sir William Ingram. Now he's not, uh,
(13:26):
he's not drawing those those wild, fascinating pictures of cats.
He's drawing a much more, i would say, grounded illustration
of birds. I gotta interject really quickly. I love the
name of both the piece that he had commission and
the publication that it ran, and it was titled Bullfinches
on the Laurels, which is just charming, and the name
(13:48):
of the publication was just so exciting to me. It's
the Illustrated, Sporting and Dramatic News. Dramatic News. What does
that mean, Gabe? Uh? Yeah, I mean basically, when his
father died, Louis became the breadwinner for his family, for himself,
his mother, and his five sisters. That's a lot of pressure.
I think that's kind of what pushed him to finally
(14:11):
make a decision whether he was going to be a
musician or an artist or he actually also kicked around
the idea of being a chemist at one point too.
But he was able to find work, as we mentioned
in illustration, and that was for the news because this
was at a time when photography wasn't really reliable enough
to be used in newspapers, and so instead you would
(14:33):
send around illustrators to just jot down what they were
seeing and sketch it out. And a lot of the
time the journalists doing that, the illustrator doing that would
be the one writing these pieces too, And that was
the case for for Louis Wayne. He was doing the
right the editorial and the illustration for for news. I
don't know what the news entailed bowl finches on the laurels,
(14:55):
you know, like what exactly the news was with these
birds or if that was just for decoration, but I
was yeah, that was kind of his big break. So
really really a functional job at this point, Like you know,
you're serving the purpose of like turning around assignments very quickly.
You'd have to be a really efficient artist and and
work very quickly and be able to sketch what you
see and turn it around quickly. And in addition, he
(15:16):
said he was writing the copy too, Is that right? Yeah, absolutely,
it was a lot of stress and pressure to get
this right, um, both in writing and you know in visuals,
and yeah, you had a pretty quick turnaround with these
deadlines too, but yeah, it was it was a really
realistic style that he was going with at the time,
because again this was for you know, news publication, so uh,
(15:37):
nothing too creative or fanciful yet in that department, it
was kind of you know a lot of still life
and uh, kind of what you would see like in
a courtroom, courtroom renderings and stuff like that, just drawn
on the spot. And uh, of course I want to
step back. I didn't want to roll over. We are
doing this on a zoom call, so let me know
if I actually interrupted you bloody. But I wanted to
(15:58):
point out, of course that uh, this little known fact,
uh the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News was Sir William
Ingram's response to the uh much more popular at the time,
non illustrated Sedate and Dry Reports, which was you know,
(16:19):
they sold millions of copies. It was just a list
of various bushels of like grain and uh some you know,
uh some descriptions, but not illustrations of various styles of shoe.
It was just a different time, you know, it was
a different time. Yeah, you're right, You're right. It was
(16:39):
in this in this uh milieu, in this cultural stew
Being a commercial artist doesn't give one a lot of
time to explore one's aesthetic voice, right. This is really
keeping the lights on, keeping the food on the table.
And he is forced to grow up more quickly than
others his same age at the time, and he meets
(17:01):
and falls in love with the governess of his sisters,
Emily Richardson. She's she's a little bit older than he is.
See he's like he's in his early twenties, she's probably
in her early thirties. But their head over heels and
it's beautiful. They moved in together and they get married
in nineteen eighty four, and she is always his greatest
(17:24):
champion for these cat pictures. Quick point of order, gentleman, governess,
is that like a chaperone? Is that sort of a handmaiden? Like?
What are we talking here? A no pair? Yeah, it's
like Mary Poppins, right, Yeah, I think that's just right.
You're you're you're both a tutor and a babysitter and
at times a cook. Yeah. So he hit it off
(17:45):
with this new governess. They quickly fell in love, got married,
moved in together, and early on in their relationship one
thing that kind of drew them close was they rescued
this stray cat from the rain. They named him Peter
or Peter the Great, and for a time, you know,
they were really just happy and young and love together.
He was working for the news and uh, you know,
(18:06):
making money for the family and all was well. But unfortunately, um,
pretty soon after they got together, Emily was diagnosed with
breast cancer and it turned out to be inoperable. And
kind of during this time, her biggest comfort and consolation was, uh,
Peter the cat and Lewis Wayne's drawings of him. He
(18:28):
would just sketch their cat and do funny things like
put spectacles on the cat and then draw it and
make it look like it was reading the newspaper. And
she apparently got a huge kick out of this, and
I think they both did, and that was kind of,
you know, the thing that sparked his career in cats.
I want to point out really quickly, Uh, Wayne and
(18:49):
our our our own Ben Bolan, do you kind of
have something in common because technically, Ben, your cat's name
is Peter Dr Bankman. That is correct. Yeah, and uh,
you know, long time listeners especially people have been listening
since we've been recording remotely, you probably recognize all of
our cats from there there. Uh I say this, Uh,
(19:11):
they're non completely consensual appearances on the show, but we definitely,
I think it's safe to say we definitely owe a
lot to our pets. And one thing here that's so
so amazing about this story is that later, unfortunately, when
Emily has passed away, he's, uh, he still has these
(19:32):
cat pictures and he does eventually sell them. I think
the first one he sells eighteen eighty six. But when
he's looking back on his career, he has a very
interesting quote where he says to him, properly belongs to
the foundation of my career, the developments of my initial
efforts and the establishing of my work. So credit where
its due. You gotta respect the guy, and you know,
(19:53):
to be fair and not to take anything away from
Peter's contribution. But the guy we mentioned earlier, the editor,
the publisher, I'm sorry, Sir Ingram. He's kind of a
lifelong benefactor for Wayne. He really gave him that big break,
you know, in the newspaper. And he's also the guy
that that first publishes his cat pictures um and he
you know, he he helps, uh, he helps the Wayne
(20:16):
family find a house in the countryside and really just
kind of looks after this guy and and kind of
sets him up in the early days of his career.
So you know, Peter did a lot, but also Sir
Ingram gets a little credit, I guess well, and not
to get to dour too quickly, but it is also
a career that was kind of founded in grief, because
he really did get this push to start sketching cats
(20:40):
from his ailing wife, and then continued that after she passed,
which while certainly in uh you know, a way of
honoring her memory, had to have been somewhat painful. Yeah,
that's a good point, I would think. So she she was,
she was a big proponent of it. She wanted him
to go, you know, full tilt into this cat art
and kept encouraging him to do it and take the
sketches to your editors, you know, and let's see what
(21:02):
they what they think. Maybe maybe this is you know,
a more fun avenue for you to kind of explore
your artistic side. And uh yeah, you kind of alluded
to it earlier. Been but it wasn't the warmest reception
at first. No, no, Gabe, no, casey as well, tell me,
tell me that people appreciated the painful place from which
(21:24):
this uh talent emerged. Tell me that the critics were
over the moon about this. Please someone, Yeah, not so much.
What one critic um an editor actually of the paper
that he was submitting this, uh this this picture too,
and of course it was a picture of Peter the
Great reportedly asked Wayne, whoever would want to see a
(21:44):
picture of a cat? And It's funny. When Ben quoted
that at the top of the show, my immediate response was,
what an absurd question in this our internet times, you know,
where like cat pictures are king basically internet currency, you know. Um.
And he really, you know, sometimes you just two ahead
(22:05):
of your time and people just don't see the genius
that is cat pics. Um. And he really took it further.
He started to really develop from just doing portraits of cats,
which is what this one would have been. Uh, he
doubled down. He was not deterred. He really created the
blueprint for those anthropomorphic you know, Disney and Pixar animals
(22:30):
that we all know and love today and that are
like big, big business. Right. Yeah, it's true. He was
not deterred in the slightest. I I actually read that
at the peak of his career, he was he was
churning out like six hundred to a thousand unique cat
pictures every year. Um. And he kept this up for
for quite a long time. The peak of his career
(22:50):
is considered to be a nineteen hundred to nineteen fifteen,
So I mean five hundred to a thousand unique cat
pictures every year for you know, a decade and a
half two decades. That's uh, that's commitment. Yeah, like you said, no,
he's developing this style. And when he gets his big
(23:12):
break in the Illustrated London News with a with a
actual cat photo, he is lauded for a piece called
a Kittens Christmas Party and boom, overnight success, overnight fame.
You can find a photo or you can find an
image of this online. I want to just describe it
really quickly. Uh, it's a lot to unpack. Um. The
(23:35):
top of it almost looks like a last Supper esque
kind of like situation, a tableau really with these kittens,
like sitting at a dinner table with plates and cups
and saucers in front of them. It's is just ridiculous
it would have thought to do that. One of them
looks to be consulting some sort of document. I don't
know what. That might have been a menu perhaps, but
(23:57):
they're they're not anthropomorphic quite yet. They are sitting at
a table, but they are still in kitten you know poses,
and there's one kind of playing with a toy or
something on the table and it almost has laid out
like a comic where there's panels and stuff. Gabe, you
wanted to talk a little bit more about this particular
piece that really pushed him into the stratosphere. Uh yeah,
(24:18):
so this was for um, like you said that this
was a kitten's Christmas party. So this was for the
Christmas edition of the Illustrated London News. And I believe
it accompanied a short story, a Christmas story about some cats,
you know, celebrating Christmas. So it was kind of meant
to go along with the story, and um, you know,
just show showed cats kind of taking part in human activities.
(24:41):
But again, like you mentioned, they weren't anthropomorphized yet. Uh,
that would come a little bit later. But still people
loved just kind of the energy of it, the ridiculous nous,
the humor that was you know, on display, and this illustration,
and uh yeah, they wanted more. And Wayne was more
than happy to a blige. Yeah, he was not to
(25:02):
do He was not one of those people who says like, no,
I'm not gonna be boxed in. I do a lot
of other different stuff. You know. You hear about actors
who say like I've been cast in this role I
can no longer escape, or musicians who hate having to
play the same song over and over in some sort
of weird limbo. Wayne was down, he was super down
(25:24):
cats to find his career, and he was roughly one
million cat percent on board. He had. You know, there's
great pr about it where he's uh there, there's a
photograph of him that was kind of making the rounds
when people did uh think pieces or get to know
your author kind of things about him. Uh, and it
shows him, you know, he's he's getting ready to draw
(25:46):
what is shortley a cat, and he's also you know,
hesitating before he draws the cat because he needs to
pet the real cat that's sitting next to him, his
desk mate. And uh, this is where we start to
see his kind of um, his evolution really kick into gear.
(26:07):
So I would say that Kitten's Christmas party is whimsical, right,
And a lot of his cats were kind of realistic,
more realistic affairs, think more like w. H Auden the
way he drew birds, you know, like he wanted them
these look like real cats. But sure enough, he he
(26:28):
heard the public or he heard an inner voice of
his own, and his cats started walking on their hind legs,
they started grinning. Uh, you know, they were doing more
and more of the things that you described nol In
in that picture. And this is where we get to
a little bit of um audience interpretation, like who owns
(26:49):
the meaning of a work of art does? Is it
the artist, the creator or is it the audience the observer?
Because some people will tell you, especially the author of
an Atlas obscure or an article in particular, we'll tell
you that these cats seem really cute, almost sacharan at times,
but they could also be interpreted as sinister. Where do
(27:10):
you guys think that comes from? I think the Christmas
painting is actually quite sinister, honestly. Uh. There's a certain
cultishness to it. They're like circling around and there's like
ones holding flags kind of in the background, and there's
one scenario where they're like playing with these mice that
are lined up. I find the whole thing to be
a little sinister. I that one in particular, I know,
(27:30):
he moves more towards the saccharin. You know, let's put
them in patents, you know all that. But this particular
one I found a little bit on the creepy side.
What do you think, Gabe, Yeah, I think, uh, you
know that kind of is a thread through all of
his work I think. I mean, even once he's he's
drawing these cutesye anthropomorphized cats, there is still an element
of danger or kind of mischievous nous to them. Um,
(27:54):
A lot of the times he's drawing cats kind of
in distress, Like there's a bunch of cats pie held
into a car and it's sinking in a lake or
something like that. Or there's cats out ice skating and there,
you know, there's a sign that says dangerous and the
ice is is thin and they're falling through the ice
and kind of you know, shrieking. And usually there's a
(28:15):
couple of cats off to the side kind of slightly
grinning as if they're enjoying this. So there was an
edgy side to this, uh you know what we might
be tempted to call cute c art and that came
out more and more as his career went along. A
big break for him was actually the development of postcards. Um.
This was something strange I found out. But the golden
(28:36):
age of postcards, there is such a thing, was not
considered nineteen hundred to nineteen fifteen, and that is like
his peak period. UM. And basically people fell in love
with these designs. I think he sold over eleven hundred
unique postcard designs over the years. So you know, each
postcard would have, you know, feature one cat or multiple
(29:00):
cats and these kind of scenarios, and yeah, they were
pretty adorable, but there was always kind of a hint
of menace to them. Well, as we all know and
can attest to, cats are tolls. I mean, every every
incredibly intelligent creature can be a told. My mine are
hopefully more eccentric. I'm saying that because they can hear me. Help.
(29:20):
But but here, you know, here we are. We've painted
the origin story right, and we've painted the rise to
the rise to fame or at least two public prominence.
But you can already here ridiculous historians that there are
some you know, there's some minor keys sinking in to
our our composition. So what we'd like to do today
(29:45):
is call this part one. We are going to explore
the rest of the story of Louis Wayne in part
two of our episode. And just to let you know,
things are going to it weird, so please tune in immediately. Gabe,
(30:05):
you gotta come with us on this journey, right, You're
coming with us and down this rabbit hole or should
I say this kitten hole. Yeah, you can't keep me away. No,
this is oh man like like Gene Wilder playing Willie
Walker said no, wait, that's rocky horror picture show. You
know the person who said Antissa patient, I am looking
(30:27):
forward to this. Thanks as always to our super producer
Casey Pegram, Oh my gosh, and for the first time
ever in real life. Thanks to Cabe Lousier Lose your
anything but loser uh for being the best research associate
and guests that that a group of podcast nerds could
ask for. Thanks for being here, man, Thanks for having me. Guys,
(30:48):
this was really fun. Thanks to super producer Casey Pegram
as always, Alex Williams who composed our theme. Christopher hassiotis
here in spirit. Thanks of course to Eve's Jeff Coat,
our peer podcast Sir, Thanks as always do Jonathan Strickland
a k a. The Quister, Thanks to Louis Wayne and
(31:09):
no thanks to you. Thanks to YouTube Benn. We'll see
you next time. Folks. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye
(00:27):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. What better way to start
off the show than to say, sometimes critics with the
best of intentions are just wrong. There's a there's a
great quotation that will come up later today with one
critic who famously said, whoever would want to see a
(00:50):
picture of a cat? You'll see why this is important later,
but right now, I'm willing to bet that there are
many people listening to the show while also checking out
some sweet, sweet memes of cats. I'm I'm Ben. I
also have a cat to Oh yeah, yeah, Mr Vankman
and just the one that shall not be named right,
(01:11):
he has many names? Uh, the Colonel Mr Jack Potts.
That's a Lynch reference. Uh. And then yeah he's got
he's got some names. No, you cohabitate with a cat
as well. I do. My name is Noel and my
cat only has two names. Uh. Came by both of
them relatively honestly got this cat through my my dear
buddy in front of the show, Frank Mulharan's parents. And uh,
(01:33):
we're not told that the cat already had a name,
so we banned it together and named him Fernando. And
then some time went by and Frank's parents are coming
for a visit and he's sort of really quickly huddled
with me and said, hey, man, in case they asked,
the cat's name is Robert. And I'm like, wait, what
the cat had a name all this time and you
didn't say anything. And the cat it has a little bobtail,
hence the name Robert. So depending on his behavior, sometimes
(01:56):
he's a Fernando and sometimes he's a Robert. Yeah, and uh,
roberta jaman if he's really in trouble, right, and you
got the whole name or cathew, So I gotta say, man.
One thing I like about our show is that we
are all fans of multiple names and aliases. Uh. There
is another person we always love to introduce at the
(02:18):
top of show, a man with a couple of extra
names himself. That's our super producer, Casey Pegram. No, Casey,
you're not gonna go for the bait uh as la bush.
I don't know what you're talking about. Been he knows, no,
he knows. He's always known. Amerta ban Omerta, all right, well,
today's episode is a doozy. This is one that came
(02:40):
to us directly from a man with many titles. You're
familiar with him if you've listened to our show before.
Our research associate, our research guru, are very own wizard
behind the curtain who we have. Finally, after weeks and
months of teasing, we've finally got the chance to have
him on air today. Ridiculous historians, Please welcome to the
(03:03):
audio stage, Gabe Lousier. Okay, Gabe, really quickly, we got
to clear this up. We some sometimes we do, Gabe Lozier.
We we tend to lean into the French and call
you ms Monsieur Lousier. Give it to us straight. Tell
us your name game. Um, it is l u z
(03:23):
I E R. And that is generally how I pronounce it,
by spelling it out, because I have no idea. Really,
I guess it's you know, if you lean into the French,
it's Lousier. Um. I do usually just spell it because
I try not to say my own name as much
as I can. Uh, my role pretty much since grade
school has been anything but loser. And we're good, all right.
(03:47):
I love it now, Gabe, you uh, you have been
a familiar presence to many of our fellow listeners for
a long time now, since since the show began. Uh,
and we're gonna have to be completely transparent with you. Uh,
time is weird for us pre quarantine. We're not a
sure how many episodes we've actually done. But fans of
(04:11):
other podcasts such as Part Time Genius by our friends
Will and Mango, Uh, they may also recognize you. You
you've worked with them in the past, is that correct? Uh, yeah,
that's right. I hooked up with them back in their
Mental Floss days and did some freelancing for that, and
when they made the jump to podcasts, they brought me
on board as their research guy, and uh yeah, I've
(04:32):
been doing that ever since with them and do a
little work on Next Question with Katie Curic too. But
uh yeah, part Time Genius and Ridiculous History, those are
kind of my bread and butter at this point, and
the rest is podcast history, my friend. Uh, that's how
we like to refer to to what we do here,
a ridiculous history and we couldn't do without you, and
you had some big shoes to fill two with Christopher
(04:53):
haciotis who I always say is here in spirit because
he was kind of our first research associate slash Guru
and his spirit lives on and you have truly picked
up that mantle and carried it with a plum my friends,
so we we appreciate you so very much, as do
the ridiculous historians out there in podcast land. Well, thanks guys. Yeah,
(05:13):
I always ask myself what would Chris do when I
pick a topic? And uh, Christopher sends his blessing as well. Um,
we have done our best to uh to make sure
that our nemesses. We have a couple of nemessies on
the show game. We just want to be clear with
you about that, to make sure that they don't make
an appearance on today's episode. But honestly, we don't know
(05:35):
how it goes every time we're on on the mic,
so so be Warren. There may be a quister, there
may not. We don't know for sure, but we are.
We were talking a little bit off air before we
started rolling today and you have some very close personal
ties with today's topic, which we're finally getting around to
(05:58):
today's topic, uh, which is something that might surprise a
lot of people to learn. The artistic obsession with cats
or even dare we say, the mimetic obsession with cats
uh predates the Internet and in the West we can
trace some of this to like one guy. Yeah, that's right.
(06:20):
I mean he's kind of the father of the cat
meme about a hundred years before you know, memes or
the Internet even existed. And uh yeah, I mean I'm
obviously a cat I myself. I work in podcasting off
Mike primarily, so yeah, definitely a cat guy. This is
the most prolific cap artist in history, I would say, Um,
I feel pretty confident in that. And of course his
(06:43):
name is Lewis Wayne, and he's a British nineteenth century
uh artist, cat artist specifically. Yeah. Now that sounds hyperbolic,
but as we are soon to learn, that superlative is earned.
You'll recognize even if you don't know the name Louis Wayne,
you have we guarantee you seeing some of his work.
(07:08):
Maybe maybe let's learn a little bit about his early life,
how he became uh the father of the cat meme.
Uh know, when when does his story really start? Would
you say? Well, it starts on day one and and
and Clerkinwell, London, on the fifth of August of eighteen sixty.
He was born to Um, a textile entrepreneur who was
(07:33):
his father, and his mother was French and her name
was Felicia, which is a name that I love to
say out loud because it rolls off the tongue in
a very feline kind of way. Uh. And Louis Um
was was not alone. He was one of six children
and the only boy, which I can't personally relate to.
And my father was the middle child among like five sisters.
(07:56):
And it is a tough road to ho my friend.
And let me tell you, he definitely, uh did not
come away from that situation let's say, completely sane. Yeah
that that's kind of putting it mildly, i'd say, but uh, yeah,
I mean you mentioned that his father was in the
textile business, and it actually goes much further than that.
(08:19):
Like his father was a traveling textile salesman, but his
maternal grandfather, so his mom's dad, was a tapestry designer himself.
And actually his mother was a designer of like Turkish
style carpet patterns. So this guy grew up surrounded by
lots of color and patterns. It was just kind of
(08:40):
ingrained him in from an early age. Uh, not just
carpet and textile but also wallpaper patterns. It was everywhere,
and it really shows up particularly in his later art,
which we'll get to later. But uh, yeah, this was
a guy who came from an artist family. Yeah, and
it's interesting because he was only sort of a sponge
(09:01):
for these very visual aesthetics. And we know that he was,
um not considered a prodigy in his early years of schooling. Right.
No one's like, whoa, look at all the math this
guy is doing. He's like a math doctor or something.
But he was. He was already exhibiting at a young
(09:22):
age talent and music and sports, and his aesthetic talents
led him to a student career studying at the West
London School of Art. There's a great there's there's a
great article that you pulled gave from artsy dot net
that talks a little bit about his career in context
(09:45):
of great cultural shifts. Right, so we see in his
career that you know, a micro cosmic look at the
shift from Victorian to Edwardian eras. And what I thought
was interesting about this is it it kind of provided
the audience that he would later find as well. So
(10:05):
his So it's interesting that the audience for his art
was being created almost at the same time that his
artistic voice was coming into its own. Would you agree
with that. Oh, yeah, that's that's totally true. I mean
he was coming up in it was kind of post
industrial Revolution, pre World War One, so you know in England,
(10:27):
the middle class and upper class especially it was becoming
the leisure class. They had a lot more time on
their hands, they had a lot more opportunities for diversion,
and uh yeah, he kind of leaned into that with
his art, particularly in the early days. A lot of
his cats would be drawn sort of taking part in
those activities, whether they're boating or having tea parties or
(10:49):
you know, playing cricket or croquet. All of this stuff
was very much of the era, and it was interest
that he had himself too. I mean, despite being kind
of an eccentric I person, he was also very athletic
and outgoing in that regard. He was a sporty guy
as well as an arty guy, which is not always
the case. Yeah, and it's it's funny because it's all
(11:11):
of these things. But just like you know with cats,
like you might see one where cats playing a trombone
or a cello or something like that. Uh, and just
doing human stuff before this idea of anthropomorphized uh, you know,
animals with celebrity voices became a thing. You know, like
he really was on the cutting edge as out there
is this must have seemed at the time, and I'm
(11:32):
sure delightful too many. Um it's now something that we
just totally take for granted beyond cat mean just in
terms of like, you know, Disney movies, like early Disney
movies and the idea of talking animals doing human things
and wearing human clothes. Right, Yeah, definitely, it was still
novel at the time what he was doing, and that's
why people kind of gravitated towards it. I don't think
they really knew how strange the man behind the art was,
(11:55):
but at the time it didn't really matter. You know,
he found fame anyway, just kind of through capturing the
spirit of the era and for whatever reason, channeling it
in Two Cats. Yeah, and we do have to say, um,
you know, we should be grateful today in pandemic aside
to have his art, because he was very close to
(12:17):
just being a musician. I don't mean to say just
being a musician. I'm sure he would have found his voice,
but but he was very close to not pursuing a
career in painting. There's an interesting confluence of events here,
one amazing and one quite tragic. They happen in his
(12:40):
early twenties and just the space of two years. So
when he is twenty years old, his father passes away.
His mother will eventually go on to try to run
the weighing family textile business, but she becomes financially insolvent,
she goes bankrupt. And while this, you know, this tremendous,
(13:02):
profound family tragedy is occurring, and while he's recovering or
dealing with that grief, just a year later, when he's
twenty one years old, in one and he's switched to
art by now, he meets and secures an agreement with
his first patron, the editor of the Illustrated London News,
a guy named Sir William Ingram. Now he's not, uh,
(13:26):
he's not drawing those those wild, fascinating pictures of cats.
He's drawing a much more, i would say, grounded illustration
of birds. I gotta interject really quickly. I love the
name of both the piece that he had commission and
the publication that it ran, and it was titled Bullfinches
on the Laurels, which is just charming, and the name
(13:48):
of the publication was just so exciting to me. It's
the Illustrated, Sporting and Dramatic News. Dramatic News. What does
that mean, Gabe? Uh? Yeah, I mean basically, when his
father died, Louis became the breadwinner for his family, for himself,
his mother, and his five sisters. That's a lot of pressure.
I think that's kind of what pushed him to finally
(14:11):
make a decision whether he was going to be a
musician or an artist or he actually also kicked around
the idea of being a chemist at one point too.
But he was able to find work, as we mentioned
in illustration, and that was for the news because this
was at a time when photography wasn't really reliable enough
to be used in newspapers, and so instead you would
(14:33):
send around illustrators to just jot down what they were
seeing and sketch it out. And a lot of the
time the journalists doing that, the illustrator doing that would
be the one writing these pieces too, And that was
the case for for Louis Wayne. He was doing the
right the editorial and the illustration for for news. I
don't know what the news entailed bowl finches on the laurels,
(14:55):
you know, like what exactly the news was with these
birds or if that was just for decoration, but I
was yeah, that was kind of his big break. So
really really a functional job at this point, Like you know,
you're serving the purpose of like turning around assignments very quickly.
You'd have to be a really efficient artist and and
work very quickly and be able to sketch what you
see and turn it around quickly. And in addition, he
(15:16):
said he was writing the copy too, Is that right? Yeah, absolutely,
it was a lot of stress and pressure to get
this right, um, both in writing and you know in visuals,
and yeah, you had a pretty quick turnaround with these
deadlines too, but yeah, it was it was a really
realistic style that he was going with at the time,
because again this was for you know, news publication, so uh,
(15:37):
nothing too creative or fanciful yet in that department, it
was kind of you know a lot of still life
and uh, kind of what you would see like in
a courtroom, courtroom renderings and stuff like that, just drawn
on the spot. And uh, of course I want to
step back. I didn't want to roll over. We are
doing this on a zoom call, so let me know
if I actually interrupted you bloody. But I wanted to
(15:58):
point out, of course that uh, this little known fact,
uh the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News was Sir William
Ingram's response to the uh much more popular at the time,
non illustrated Sedate and Dry Reports, which was you know,
(16:19):
they sold millions of copies. It was just a list
of various bushels of like grain and uh some you know,
uh some descriptions, but not illustrations of various styles of shoe.
It was just a different time, you know, it was
a different time. Yeah, you're right, You're right. It was
(16:39):
in this in this uh milieu, in this cultural stew
Being a commercial artist doesn't give one a lot of
time to explore one's aesthetic voice, right. This is really
keeping the lights on, keeping the food on the table.
And he is forced to grow up more quickly than
others his same age at the time, and he meets
(17:01):
and falls in love with the governess of his sisters,
Emily Richardson. She's she's a little bit older than he is.
See he's like he's in his early twenties, she's probably
in her early thirties. But their head over heels and
it's beautiful. They moved in together and they get married
in nineteen eighty four, and she is always his greatest
(17:24):
champion for these cat pictures. Quick point of order, gentleman, governess,
is that like a chaperone? Is that sort of a handmaiden? Like?
What are we talking here? A no pair? Yeah, it's
like Mary Poppins, right, Yeah, I think that's just right.
You're you're you're both a tutor and a babysitter and
at times a cook. Yeah. So he hit it off
(17:45):
with this new governess. They quickly fell in love, got married,
moved in together, and early on in their relationship one
thing that kind of drew them close was they rescued
this stray cat from the rain. They named him Peter
or Peter the Great, and for a time, you know,
they were really just happy and young and love together.
He was working for the news and uh, you know,
(18:06):
making money for the family and all was well. But unfortunately, um,
pretty soon after they got together, Emily was diagnosed with
breast cancer and it turned out to be inoperable. And
kind of during this time, her biggest comfort and consolation was, uh,
Peter the cat and Lewis Wayne's drawings of him. He
(18:28):
would just sketch their cat and do funny things like
put spectacles on the cat and then draw it and
make it look like it was reading the newspaper. And
she apparently got a huge kick out of this, and
I think they both did, and that was kind of,
you know, the thing that sparked his career in cats.
I want to point out really quickly, Uh, Wayne and
(18:49):
our our our own Ben Bolan, do you kind of
have something in common because technically, Ben, your cat's name
is Peter Dr Bankman. That is correct. Yeah, and uh,
you know, long time listeners especially people have been listening
since we've been recording remotely, you probably recognize all of
our cats from there there. Uh I say this, Uh,
(19:11):
they're non completely consensual appearances on the show, but we definitely,
I think it's safe to say we definitely owe a
lot to our pets. And one thing here that's so
so amazing about this story is that later, unfortunately, when
Emily has passed away, he's, uh, he still has these
(19:32):
cat pictures and he does eventually sell them. I think
the first one he sells eighteen eighty six. But when
he's looking back on his career, he has a very
interesting quote where he says to him, properly belongs to
the foundation of my career, the developments of my initial
efforts and the establishing of my work. So credit where
its due. You gotta respect the guy, and you know,
(19:53):
to be fair and not to take anything away from
Peter's contribution. But the guy we mentioned earlier, the editor,
the publisher, I'm sorry, Sir Ingram. He's kind of a
lifelong benefactor for Wayne. He really gave him that big break,
you know, in the newspaper. And he's also the guy
that that first publishes his cat pictures um and he
you know, he he helps, uh, he helps the Wayne
(20:16):
family find a house in the countryside and really just
kind of looks after this guy and and kind of
sets him up in the early days of his career.
So you know, Peter did a lot, but also Sir
Ingram gets a little credit, I guess well, and not
to get to dour too quickly, but it is also
a career that was kind of founded in grief, because
he really did get this push to start sketching cats
(20:40):
from his ailing wife, and then continued that after she passed,
which while certainly in uh you know, a way of
honoring her memory, had to have been somewhat painful. Yeah,
that's a good point, I would think. So she she was,
she was a big proponent of it. She wanted him
to go, you know, full tilt into this cat art
and kept encouraging him to do it and take the
sketches to your editors, you know, and let's see what
(21:02):
they what they think. Maybe maybe this is you know,
a more fun avenue for you to kind of explore
your artistic side. And uh yeah, you kind of alluded
to it earlier. Been but it wasn't the warmest reception
at first. No, no, Gabe, no, casey as well, tell me,
tell me that people appreciated the painful place from which
(21:24):
this uh talent emerged. Tell me that the critics were
over the moon about this. Please someone, Yeah, not so much.
What one critic um an editor actually of the paper
that he was submitting this, uh this this picture too,
and of course it was a picture of Peter the
Great reportedly asked Wayne, whoever would want to see a
(21:44):
picture of a cat? And It's funny. When Ben quoted
that at the top of the show, my immediate response was,
what an absurd question in this our internet times, you know,
where like cat pictures are king basically internet currency, you know. Um.
And he really, you know, sometimes you just two ahead
(22:05):
of your time and people just don't see the genius
that is cat pics. Um. And he really took it further.
He started to really develop from just doing portraits of cats,
which is what this one would have been. Uh, he
doubled down. He was not deterred. He really created the
blueprint for those anthropomorphic you know, Disney and Pixar animals
(22:30):
that we all know and love today and that are
like big, big business. Right. Yeah, it's true. He was
not deterred in the slightest. I I actually read that
at the peak of his career, he was he was
churning out like six hundred to a thousand unique cat
pictures every year. Um. And he kept this up for
for quite a long time. The peak of his career
(22:50):
is considered to be a nineteen hundred to nineteen fifteen,
So I mean five hundred to a thousand unique cat
pictures every year for you know, a decade and a
half two decades. That's uh, that's commitment. Yeah, like you said, no,
he's developing this style. And when he gets his big
(23:12):
break in the Illustrated London News with a with a
actual cat photo, he is lauded for a piece called
a Kittens Christmas Party and boom, overnight success, overnight fame.
You can find a photo or you can find an
image of this online. I want to just describe it
really quickly. Uh, it's a lot to unpack. Um. The
(23:35):
top of it almost looks like a last Supper esque
kind of like situation, a tableau really with these kittens,
like sitting at a dinner table with plates and cups
and saucers in front of them. It's is just ridiculous
it would have thought to do that. One of them
looks to be consulting some sort of document. I don't
know what. That might have been a menu perhaps, but
(23:57):
they're they're not anthropomorphic quite yet. They are sitting at
a table, but they are still in kitten you know poses,
and there's one kind of playing with a toy or
something on the table and it almost has laid out
like a comic where there's panels and stuff. Gabe, you
wanted to talk a little bit more about this particular
piece that really pushed him into the stratosphere. Uh yeah,
(24:18):
so this was for um, like you said that this
was a kitten's Christmas party. So this was for the
Christmas edition of the Illustrated London News. And I believe
it accompanied a short story, a Christmas story about some cats,
you know, celebrating Christmas. So it was kind of meant
to go along with the story, and um, you know,
just show showed cats kind of taking part in human activities.
(24:41):
But again, like you mentioned, they weren't anthropomorphized yet. Uh,
that would come a little bit later. But still people
loved just kind of the energy of it, the ridiculous nous,
the humor that was you know, on display, and this illustration,
and uh yeah, they wanted more. And Wayne was more
than happy to a blige. Yeah, he was not to
(25:02):
do He was not one of those people who says like, no,
I'm not gonna be boxed in. I do a lot
of other different stuff. You know. You hear about actors
who say like I've been cast in this role I
can no longer escape, or musicians who hate having to
play the same song over and over in some sort
of weird limbo. Wayne was down, he was super down
(25:24):
cats to find his career, and he was roughly one
million cat percent on board. He had. You know, there's
great pr about it where he's uh there, there's a
photograph of him that was kind of making the rounds
when people did uh think pieces or get to know
your author kind of things about him. Uh, and it
shows him, you know, he's he's getting ready to draw
(25:46):
what is shortley a cat, and he's also you know,
hesitating before he draws the cat because he needs to
pet the real cat that's sitting next to him, his
desk mate. And uh, this is where we start to
see his kind of um, his evolution really kick into gear.
(26:07):
So I would say that Kitten's Christmas party is whimsical, right,
And a lot of his cats were kind of realistic,
more realistic affairs, think more like w. H Auden the
way he drew birds, you know, like he wanted them
these look like real cats. But sure enough, he he
(26:28):
heard the public or he heard an inner voice of
his own, and his cats started walking on their hind legs,
they started grinning. Uh, you know, they were doing more
and more of the things that you described nol In
in that picture. And this is where we get to
a little bit of um audience interpretation, like who owns
(26:49):
the meaning of a work of art does? Is it
the artist, the creator or is it the audience the observer?
Because some people will tell you, especially the author of
an Atlas obscure or an article in particular, we'll tell
you that these cats seem really cute, almost sacharan at times,
but they could also be interpreted as sinister. Where do
(27:10):
you guys think that comes from? I think the Christmas
painting is actually quite sinister, honestly. Uh. There's a certain
cultishness to it. They're like circling around and there's like
ones holding flags kind of in the background, and there's
one scenario where they're like playing with these mice that
are lined up. I find the whole thing to be
a little sinister. I that one in particular, I know,
(27:30):
he moves more towards the saccharin. You know, let's put
them in patents, you know all that. But this particular
one I found a little bit on the creepy side.
What do you think, Gabe, Yeah, I think, uh, you
know that kind of is a thread through all of
his work I think. I mean, even once he's he's
drawing these cutesye anthropomorphized cats, there is still an element
of danger or kind of mischievous nous to them. Um,
(27:54):
A lot of the times he's drawing cats kind of
in distress, Like there's a bunch of cats pie held
into a car and it's sinking in a lake or
something like that. Or there's cats out ice skating and there,
you know, there's a sign that says dangerous and the
ice is is thin and they're falling through the ice
and kind of you know, shrieking. And usually there's a
(28:15):
couple of cats off to the side kind of slightly
grinning as if they're enjoying this. So there was an
edgy side to this, uh you know what we might
be tempted to call cute c art and that came
out more and more as his career went along. A
big break for him was actually the development of postcards. Um.
This was something strange I found out. But the golden
(28:36):
age of postcards, there is such a thing, was not
considered nineteen hundred to nineteen fifteen, and that is like
his peak period. UM. And basically people fell in love
with these designs. I think he sold over eleven hundred
unique postcard designs over the years. So you know, each
postcard would have, you know, feature one cat or multiple
(29:00):
cats and these kind of scenarios, and yeah, they were
pretty adorable, but there was always kind of a hint
of menace to them. Well, as we all know and
can attest to, cats are tolls. I mean, every every
incredibly intelligent creature can be a told. My mine are
hopefully more eccentric. I'm saying that because they can hear me. Help.
(29:20):
But but here, you know, here we are. We've painted
the origin story right, and we've painted the rise to
the rise to fame or at least two public prominence.
But you can already here ridiculous historians that there are
some you know, there's some minor keys sinking in to
our our composition. So what we'd like to do today
(29:45):
is call this part one. We are going to explore
the rest of the story of Louis Wayne in part
two of our episode. And just to let you know,
things are going to it weird, so please tune in immediately. Gabe,
(30:05):
you gotta come with us on this journey, right, You're
coming with us and down this rabbit hole or should
I say this kitten hole. Yeah, you can't keep me away. No,
this is oh man like like Gene Wilder playing Willie
Walker said no, wait, that's rocky horror picture show. You
know the person who said Antissa patient, I am looking
(30:27):
forward to this. Thanks as always to our super producer
Casey Pegram, Oh my gosh, and for the first time
ever in real life. Thanks to Cabe Lousier Lose your
anything but loser uh for being the best research associate
and guests that that a group of podcast nerds could
ask for. Thanks for being here, man, Thanks for having me. Guys,
(30:48):
this was really fun. Thanks to super producer Casey Pegram
as always, Alex Williams who composed our theme. Christopher hassiotis
here in spirit. Thanks of course to Eve's Jeff Coat,
our peer podcast Sir, Thanks as always do Jonathan Strickland
a k a. The Quister, Thanks to Louis Wayne and
(31:09):
no thanks to you. Thanks to YouTube Benn. We'll see
you next time. Folks. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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