Sir Winston Churchill

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL KG OM FRS Hon. RA Blenheim Palace, Woodstock 1874 – 1965 London In 1948, Churchill was made an Honorary Academician Extraordinary by the Royal Academy of Arts. He later told the painter, Sir John Rothenstein: ‘If it weren’t for painting, I couldn’t live; I couldn’t bear the strain of things’. Churchill painted about 500 paintings, of which roughly 350 remain in the Studio at Chartwell; the rest were given to friends. He began painting in 1915 and continued when stationed in Flanders in World War I. In the 1920s, when he was in the Colonial Office, Churchill discovered the dazzling light of the Middle East and North Africa. He returned many times to paint at the house of Sir John Lavery in Tangiers, and his earlier works in oil reflect Lavery’s dashing, painterly style. Churchill was friendly with many artists, including Walter Sickert and William Nicholson, and elements of their styles appear in his own work. From the 1920s he was happily settled at Chartwell, where he built his own studio in the lovely gardens overlooking the Weald of Kent. As a statesman, he travelled constantly, often snatching time to paint. He also painted at the country houses of friends, such as Sir Philip Sassoon’s Port Lympne in Kent and Edwin Montagu’s Breccles Hall in Norfolk. His bold style captures landscape in every mood, although he also tackled portraits and still life. In the 1930s, his ‘wilderness years’, Churchill painted often in the Mediterranean, staying with Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, at La Capponcina on the Riviera. In his later years he experimented with tempera as well as oil. He was still painting at the age of eighty-five, when The Sunday Times wrote of the hugely successful Royal Academy exhibition of his works: ‘In all of them…the tone is one of such infectious enjoyment…a free-flying delight in the world around him’.