‘The Electrical Light of Louis Wan’ True Story: Get to Know the Real Artist Played by Benedict Cumberbatch

Benedict Cumberbatch fans are in for a treat this weekend with The Electrical Light of Louis Wain, a new biographical film that began streaming on Amazon Prime today. Directed by Will Sharpe, with a script from Sharpe and Simon Stephenson, this period piece is full of emotion, whimsy, art, and of course, cats.

Cumberbatch stars as Louis Wain, an eccentric 19th-century illustrator who hates drawing people but loves sketching animals. Wain lives with his five sisters, and, in a move that was considered quite scandalous at the time, married his sisters’ governess, Emily (played by Claire Foy) in 1883. But after their love story is tragically cut short after Emily dies of cancer, Wain begins drawing comics of their pet cat Peter. That soon blossoms into more goofy cat drawings, and soon enough Wain became famous for his anthropomorphic cat illustrations.

It’s an odd but touching movie fitting for a biopic of an odd but touching man. Read on for more information on The Electrical Life of Louis Wain true story.

IS THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN BASED ON A TRUE STORY? WHO IS LOUIS WAIN?

Yes. The new Amazon movie, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, is based on the true story of the life of English artist Louis Wain, who was best known for his cartoonish, colorful drawings of cats.

According to his bio on the Bethlem Museum of the Mind website—a museum which boasts 55 pieces of Louis Wain artwork—Wain was born in 1860, and began his artisit career as an art journalist, illustrating all kinds of things for newspapers.

By the 1880s, he became famous for his cat drawings. The “Louis Wain cat” was hugely popular among the art-loving public, and could be found all over—in prints, books, magazines, postcards, and annuals. But, according to his bio, he was “highly impractical in business matters,” and was suffering from financial and mental decline during World War I. In 1924 he was declared “insane” and committed to Springfield Hospital. When an admirer of his work found him at the hospital and recognized his work, he organized a campaign—which included support from Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald—to get Wain transferred to the much nicer Bethlem Hospital.

He was eventually transferred to Napsbury Hospital, and continued drawing, even holding exhibitions at the hospital. Wain died on July 4, 1939, at the age of 78.

For a time, Wain’s more colorful and abstract paintings were used as so-called visual representations of the progression of schizophrenia and were reportedly cited in older psychology textbooks. However, those photos were not dated, and therefore it’s impossible to show a “progression,” and it is now debated as to whether Wain had schizophrenia at all.

HOW ACCURATE IS THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN?

Like any movie based on a historical figure, aspects of The Electrical Life of Louis Wain have been condensed, exaggerated, or fictionalized in order to make an entertaining movie. There’s no way to know what the real Louis Wain’s private conversations with his wife or sisters were, and therefore those scenes, that dialogue, are pure speculation.

That said, the director Will Sharpe did do extensive research for the film, including reading Wain’s own writings. While we don’t know for sure whether Wain’s cat Peter was the inspiration for his drawings, in an interview for the film’s press notes, Sharpe said he made that connection from the way Wain talked about the pet.

“Louis talked about Peter as a great source of comfort during those difficult months when Emily was ill,” Sharpe said. “Being with Emily and hanging out with Peter, and drawing Peter, that seemed to make things a little better for them both. You might wonder if that is partly why he so obsessively drew cats. It was such a lifeline to have a cat around at that really critical time of his life.”

Some details were changed to fit the casting—the real Wain met his wife when he was 23 years older, while his future wife was 10 years older than he. Obviously, for the 45-year-old Cumberbatch and 37-year-old Claire Foy, that math doesn’t quite add up.

The bit in the movie about Wain’s preoccupation with what he called “electricity,” however, was true. “I found it interesting that Louis had this peculiar fascination with the idea of ‘electricity,'” Sharpe said, “which was his word for a sort of force in the atmosphere, which sometimes he thought was a good thing and at other times a bad thing—so bad, in fact, that it was possibly even making him ill.”

So while you shouldn’t expect The Electrical Life of Louis Wain to be as accurate as a documentary, you can expect a fascinating and informative film about an unusual, interesting man. What more could you want?

Watch The Electrical Life of Louis Wain on Amazon