Artist Unknown

The station hotel painting


12/9/2026





Kuala Lumpur’s grand railway station is a true heritage landmark of Malaysia; it was built in 1917 and was designed by A.B.Hubback in the Mughal Eclectic style.

The station itself remains in full operation to this day, but within its walls behind locked doors, is also its old hotel which had been closed down and left derelict for a number of years.

The hotel had suffered years of decline before closing, becoming known more for its ropey budget accommodation and was popular too with photographers for its colonial era time capsule like décor.


My own visit to the hotel was in 2014, by then the space had sat vacant for at least 3 to 4 years, enough time for the destructive effects of the humid climate to have left its mark on everything inside. I was interested in seeing how much of the buildings period features and fittings remained, the parts that helped link a space directly back to its past.

The hotels original main wooden staircase and even its archaic cage lift was still in place, but so much else had been changed and renovated over the years.
It was in the former lounge space upstairs where I first saw something very special, a large landscape painting.


At first I assumed the artwork was just a drab contemporary backdrop, but on closer inspection it was clear that this was something very old that had been executed by a skilled hand. The painting was unsigned and the surrounding walls was devoid of any clues that could reveal more information about it. It left me intrigued.

Over the following years I thought many times of that old painting, when in August of 2026 I came across an art conservation article in The Star newspaper¹ ; the lead photo was none other than the painted landscape scene I had seen all those years before!

Someone had thankfully seen fit to save it and the artwork was now hanging inside Malaysia's National Art Gallery. Later, I was able to learn that the painting had in fact been part of their NUSA (Homeland) exhibition for at least 3 - 4 years.
What surprised me the most was that the landscape remained unattributed and was labelled simply as - Artist : Unknown

That was funny to me, because by that time I had already found out the who and the why; the mystery had simply been far too enticing not to have done some investigating!

Julius Wentscher was a painter from Germany, he was born in Konigsberg in 1881 and was the son of a well known East Prussian landscape painter, also named Julius Wentscher (1842-1918). Julius the Younger received his artistic training at the Académie Julian in Paris.

Julius was married to Tina Haim-Wentscher, a sculptor who had studied in Paris, Vienna and Berlin and was associated with the Berlin Secession artists group. Tina was born in Constantinople in 1887 to Czech parents of Turkish-Sephardic Jewish background.

Courtesy of The Straits Times, 12 February 1936

From 1921, the couple had enjoyed joint painting and sculpture study trips abroad to Greece, Italy and as far away as Bali and Java. In 1931, they travelled to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Bangkok, making their art and exhibiting work as they went.

Whilst they had been away from home, things were rapidly changing in Germany; National Socialism was taking over, making it increasingly fraught for all those the Nazi's opposed.


It was from the concerned warnings of Tina's friend, Käthe Kollwitz and even Julius's own mother, that the couple decided not to return home for the foreseeable future.

Tina's Jewish background was an obvious concern, but so too was it for Julius. The mere fact that he was married to Tina would have categorised him by the Nazi's as, "Jüdisch versippt" (family ties to Jews). Both of them would have surely been persecuted if they had returned.

The Wentscher's forced self-exile saw them move on to Singapore and Malaya in 1936. There, they further grew their artistic reputations, holding successful exhibitions and undertaking private and official commissioned projects. Tina completed several reliefs for public buildings, whilst Julius painted the installations of the Sultans in Perak and Selangor, as well as work in Singapore, such as the portrait of Sir Song Ong Siang (1871-1941), which now hangs in the National Museum of Singapore.

Possibly the couples largest joint commission, was creating life size realistic diorama scenes of Malay craft and Malayan industry, for the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow.

A few months after the couples arrival in Singapore, they conducted their first major study trip to the East Coast of Malaya, to Kelantan and Terengganu. The trip lasted four months and Julius brought back a number of paintings in water colours and oils. The Wentscher's would later exhibit their completed East Coast work to great success, with many pieces being sold, including one artwork going to the British Resident, no less.

A year later, the Wentscher's adventurous side was sparked again and another painting and sculpture expedition was organised. The couple would return to Kelantan, but this time it would be far from the coast and into the wilds of Malaya's central interior, using the Kuala Pergau Estate as base camp. From there they spent several weeks making frequent expeditions down the Galas river, passing rapids and visiting the Temiar aboriginal groups of Perak and Kelantan. In a later postwar interview, Tina would recall how she was the sole female in the party and how the locals would build them bamboo huts.

In March 1939, Julius's station hotel painting first made its public appearance. The hotel had just undergone an extensive refurbishment and the artwork was to complement the modernised and updated facilities. The painting measured '21 ft x 11 ft' (640 cm x 335 cm) and had taken Julius two months to complete.

The landscape was described as a Kelantan river scene, so one could assume that the location for its setting may well have been found during the Wentscher's Galas river expeditions in 1937.

The painting shows a bend in a river as it lazily flows its way through a lush tropical jungle scene.
In the background are thick forested hills that grow in height leading the eye off into the distance towards the majestic Gunung Tahan, Peninsular Malaysia's highest peak. In the foreground on the hillsides are houses capped with tall steep sided roofs. Local inhabitants can be seen down by the rivers bend, as a long-boat is slowly punted passed them. Not far away to the right, your eye is then caught by a tiny movement, as a blue-banded kingfisher flits across the water.
On the rightmost panel, just visible, is the East Coast Express train as it threads its way through the thick forested hill scape, behind.

But there's a big problem, we can't see any of this specific scene because the right most panel is completely missing!

We only know of the panel’s presence because of two key 1937 newspaper articles. The reports give us a brief description of the paintings composition² , its overall dimensions and a rather helpful photograph³ of the work in its entirety. Without this, we may well have been none the wiser.

The lost section would have roughly measured 131 cm in width and 341 cm in height.
Below is a picture Illustrating the loss using a copied section from the original black and white newspaper photo, combined together with the painting as it appears today.

So, what happened to the lost panel? At this point in time, I just don’t know.

Six months after the station hotel painting had been unveiled, the Wentscher's idyllic world in the Far East began to quickly unravel, when war was declared between Britain and Germany.

The Wentscher's were living in Singapore where there was already a population of German and Austrian refugees who had fled Europe, many of whom were Jewish.

The British administration quickly grew uneasy with this group living in their midst's, theorising that any one of them could become an enemy collaborator. From then on the Wentscher's and the refugees officially became designated as 'enemy aliens' and were all marked for deportation. One can only wonder what the Wentchers's thought about all of this, considering that on many occasions the colonial elites had rubbed shoulders and even bought and commissioned work from them.

All appeals by the refugees to halt their expulsion was in vain, and on the 18th of September 1940, the Wentscher's, together with around 295 men, woman and children were expelled from Singapore. They left their tropical oasis on the converted troop ship, the Queen Mary. They made passage for Sydney, Australia, where the group eventually found themselves in an internment camp in a town called Tatura in Victoria.

Having been unable to bring most of their artwork with them, the Wentscher's had left much in storage in Singapore, but it's thought that not many works survived the war, making the station hotel painting all that more precious.

In 1942, the deportees were still languishing in captivity when news broke that Singapore had fallen to Japanese forces. It was only then did they realise that their whole ordeal had in fact been a huge blessing in disguise, saving them from the horrors of war and Japanese captivity.

Later that same year, their blessings continued when they were all finally released and allowed to settle in Australia. The Wentscher's chose to live in Melbourne, obtaining Australian citizenship in 1946.

Julius continued with his painting, specialising in landscapes, portraits and depictions of horses. Julius would pass away in 1961. Tina would out live him and arguably became a far more recognised and accomplished artist in her own right, passing away in 1974.
The works of both artists can still be found today at auction as well as in private and public collections around the world.

Julius's Kelantan river scene had survived over 80 years in that same space. There, it sat through a war and lingered for decades in relative obscurity just waiting to be remembered again, and when it was, so too was the story of Julius and his wife Tina and their remarkable life.



Copyright 2026© Raz Talhar