Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a Louis Wain card I picked up the other day, a bargain due to the small hole and damage in the upper left corner. I imagine it hung on a wall maybe? Odd spot for just one hole. Nonetheless, it is fine for our enjoyment here at Pictorama.
Regular readers know I have a bit of a fascination with what it would be like to be using and receiving such cards on a daily basis. Maybe after a dinner party or gathering you might receive this one with a note on the back as a thank you. (Don’t even get me started on the dearth of thank you notes written now – I mean I would take them by email but gosh! Saying thank you is a dying art.)
It was quite pleasant is in script at the top, the sort of note Wain seemed to favor on this series of cards. I wonder how he did it – it appears to be his handwriting but somehow, I don’t think it was on the original art for example. (For similar Louis Wain cat cards you can find posts here and here for starters.) Two very different cat couples are enjoying themselves in a gently festive atmosphere. An odd sort of fluffy standing lamp almost looks like a hat on this lady cat, sporting a big blue bow and holding a pink fan in her paw hand.
She and the gent bringing a hot drink are making eye contact. He has more sort of collar on, green. His green eyes match and her blue eyes match her bow. The whiskers and eyebrows of all the cats stand out very straight. All four are brown tabbies, three browns and a gray. The pair smiles at each other and they both have white spots on their chest and tummies as well as sort of a white star in their faces. They are a sweet next-door-neighbor kind of couple.
There is a long bench they are all seated in front of and sort of potted ferns as a background behind them. The other cat couple is where things get a bit more Wain. There is something a bit racier about that gray striped girl with the big red bow slightly askew. Her nose and mouth a bit redder than the others, yellow eyes. She (somehow) holds a fan in a paw we cannot see while Mr. Brown Tabby appears to have an arm around her. She looks like a party girl! Meanwhile, Mr. Brown Tabby has a bit of a leer, like he is having some thoughts that would not bear sharing. His smirk and sideways look at her say it all.
Fair to say a good time, if a somewhat different time, was had by all. One thing I find a bit odd is that the gray girl and boy with the cup and saucer both have oddly short tails – I assume this was a sort of foreshortening but there is something a bit off about it. In addition to the ferns, there is a decorative screen of the type I think might have been popular at the time. There is a sort of screwy abstract design in the pink, yellow and blue found elsewhere in the card.
This card was never sent so we are left to just imagine what parties it might have thanked hosts for in that long ago Victorian time. Louis Wain on the other hand, remains timeless.
