1905-?
Leslie “Les” Lane was born in Sydenham, London in 1905. He was the fourth child of John Edmund Lane, a stone carver, and Beatrice Elizabeth Lane, who ran a boarding house for actors on Drury Lane. Les died in 1993 in the Bahamas, where he had spent much of his life, living in a single-storey house at Dead Man’s Reef, near West End on the island of Grand Bahama. [1]
The 1911 Census shows Les aged 6, living with his family at 50 Elm Grove, Peckham, South London. His father’s occupation is listed as “Stone cutter (stone mason)” [2]
Leslie Lane attended school in Sydenham and, like his father, and other members of his family, he became an artist. He was a painter and commercial artist - mainly a photographic retoucher. He emigrated to Canada in around 1917 along with the rest of his family, aged 12. [1]
In Toronto, Les founded a commercial art studio known as The Les Lane Studio, which he ran with Kay. [1]
Les Lane left Kay in 1935, just 2 years after Richard was born. They divorced, and Les moved to Nantucket, where he married a French woman named Catherine, whose portrait he painted. [1]
During WW2 Les served with the US Army in Italy, under General Arthur R. Wilson, whose portrait he also painted. [1]
After the war Les was posted to Paris, where he had an artist’s studio in Montmartre [3]and apparently painted Marlene Dietrich. [1]
In about the 1940s and 1950s Les ran a summer painting school at Pocomo Head, Nantucket known as the Leslie Lane School of Art, with a friend Anton Bruehl. [5]