Harrison William Weir, known as "The Father of the Cat Fancy", was an English gentleman and artist. He organised the first cat show in England, at The Crystal Palace, London, in July 1871. In 1887 Harrison Weir founded the National Cat Club and was its first President and Show Manager until his resignation in 1890.
Weir was educated at Albany Academy, Camberwell, until 1837 when he became apprenticed to George Baxter, the colour-printer. He learned to engrave and draw on wood and taught himself during his spare time to draw birds, mammals, and other subjects from nature. On his election in 1849 as member of the New Society of Painters in Water-colours—now the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours—he exhibited mainly there, altogether 100 pictures.
Weir was a natural history artist and provided illustrations for George Fyler Townsend's Three Hundred Aesop's Fables (1867). In some cases, such as The Poetry of Nature (1867), he compiled the books he illustrated. He was both author and illustrator of Every Day in the Country (1883) and Animal Studies, Old and New (1885). In 1889, Weir wrote Our Cats and All About Them describing and illustrating the pedigree varieties of the time.
(source: wikipedia)