Louis Wain ceramic cat collection fetches £27k at auction

A collection of ceramic cats created by British artist Louis Wain has sold for £27,000 at auction.

The 30 items, gathered over the years by a collector from the Cotswolds, were sold by Kinghams Auctioneers in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire.

Louis Wain specialised in drawing cats with humanised features but never achieved financial success and was certified insane in his later years.

The collection was the largest single lot of Wain items sold in recent years.

The auction house said all of them went to British buyers.

Wain's illustration work at the start of the 20th Century made him into a household name credited with changing people's feelings about cats.

He encountered personal tragedies, and when he was was placed in the care of the paupers' ward of a hospital in south London, he was discovered there by a journalist, leading to a high-profile campaign to get him better care.

Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and writer HG Wells were among those who gave their support to the campaign which led to Wain being placed in the more comfortable surroundings of the Bethlem Hospital, at Southwark.

The cubist cats made for Max Emanuel & Co, a London-based glass and porcelain importer in the early 20th Century, fetched the highest sums, with an Egyptian cat figure selling for £4,680.

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