SUCCESS

Despite what by all accounts should have been a financial success, Wain was more often than not just scraping by. On top of having to provide for his five sisters and mother, he commonly sold his illustrations directly with no thought of copyright, thus receiving few or no royalties for their republication. Beyond this, he sometimes fell for scams and charlatans, losing much of his money made during a trip to America in one such incident. Even during his 20 year run of popular annuals, he often had to pay debts with cat pictures, in addition to drawing and selling large quantities of illustrations to support cat shelters and Britain’s troops.¹

By the 1900s his popularity was waning, and the next decade brought with it a streak of bad luck. In 1910 his mother died after his return from America. His explorations into the futurist craze were literally shot down when a transport ship full of his cubist ceramic cats was sent to the bottom of the Pacific by a torpedo. His Pussyfoot cartoons, while helping lay the groundwork of later anthropomorphic animations, did not continue for long as his art style proved incompatible with the sheer number of frames that had to be drawn. Compounded by the loss of his youngest and oldest sisters in 1913 and 1917 and his steady stream of annuals ending in 1921, he entered the ‘20s with deteriorating financial prospects and strained health. However, not all was lost: he still drew just as prolifically and enthusiastically as in his earlier days, continued to illustrate the children’s books that brought delight to kits across the country, and by now was exploring themes of nature and textile patterns, hearkening both to his upbringing surrounded by such designs and the stylistic changes to come.