A tale of Louis Wain’s generosity

 A few weeks ago we had a visitor to the current Louis Wain exhibition at Brent Museum with a very interesting tale to tell about the artist, which she has kindly allowed to be shared on this blog.

 Her grandfather was Station Master at Queens Park Station in the early 1920s. At this time Louis Wain was living on Brondesbury Road in Kilburn with his sisters, and was at the height of his fame as an illustrator of ‘humanistic’ cats. Whilst at work one day, the Station Master found a roll of paintings left behind on a train that had been signed by Louis Wain. Knowing that Wain was a local resident he contacted him and, upon the return of his paintings, Wain was so grateful that he allowed the Station Master to select three paintings to keep for himself! These paintings have since been, and will continue to be, handed down in the Station Master’s family and are a great source of pride.

 The current owner of these paintings recently visited Communicating Through Cats: The Art and Mind of Louis Wain and said,

“Our story is an example of his (Louis Wain’s) generosity. (I now) look at our paintings in a totally different light since coming to the exhibition, and I can see expressions I hadn’t thought about before, (for example) inquisitiveness…  what or who were they chatting about?… (and) motherly love looking after the kittens.”

I think this is a fantastic story; Louis Wain was a well known and much-loved resident of Brent in the early twentieth century, and I suspect that there may be other Wain tales to tell that have been passed down through generations. So, please do get in touch if you have a Louis Wain story that you would like to share!

Posted by Briony