March 28, 2015

Finest Hour 127, Summer 2005

Page 46

By Tim Benson

WINSTON CHURCHILL IN CARICATURE: Through September 17th, the London exhibition of the Political Cartoon Society presents the many faces of Churchill as seen by cartoonists, friendly and vicious, over sixty years.


With an unrivalled political career, Winston Churchill became the most caricatured and cartooned politician of all time. His egocentric personality, along with his capacity for political misjudgment, offered a welcome target to cartoonists of all political persuasions. From his first election to Parliament in 1900 through his retirement as an MP in 1964, Churchill was taken to task by cartoonists of all political stripes at every available opportunity.

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At its gallery in London, the Political Cartoon Society is offering the first exhibition of original cartoons to focus exclusively on Churchill’s long and illustrious political career. The display, made up of about sixty-five original cartoons by some thirty-five cartoonists, simultaneously summarises the 20th century’s most important events as experienced and influenced by one of its most remarkable characters.

The exhibition, although mainly featuring leading British cartoonists such as Low, Strube, Vicky, Zec, Illingworth, E. H. Shepard, Cummings and Lancaster, also has work by American, Australian, Spanish and Soviet cartoonists, showing their many and varied views of the war leader who became renowned for his fondness for cigars, siren suits, hats and victory salutes. Stubborn, irascible, incisive and inspirational, Churchill’s character and achievements live again through the medium of these vivid contemporary original drawings.

The artists represented were not only the best of Fleet Street, but lesser known cartoonists who worked for provincial newspapers around Britain, such as J. C. Walker (Western Mail), George Butterworth (Manchester Daily Dispatch) and Arthur Potts (Bristol Evening World). Some of these provincial cartoonists were just as good as their Fleet Street counterparts, and the work by so-called little known artists adds an extra dimension to the exhibit.

The majority of cartoonists in Britain may not have cared for Churchill’s politics, especially over the economy when he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s and stood with the die-hards over India in the early 1930s. But they were prepared to champion his cause when they deemed it justified. They were generally in sympathy with Churchill’s warnings over Hitler’s intentions in the late 1930s.

When war eventually broke out in September 1939, the cartoons that appeared in the national press portrayed Churchill as the only man capable of offering Britain the stoic leadership it so desperately needed. On Churchill replacing the demoralised Chamberlain, it was David Low’s cartoon, “All Behind you, Winston” (on display) that best captured the public mood of the time. Throughout the whole of the Second World War, the cartoonists upheld Churchill’s war leadership without once denigrating or ridiculing him.

On display also are a number of cartoons that Churchill acquired during his lifetime. An avid collector of cartoons in which he appeared, WSC hardly ever complained about the treatment he received at the hands of the cartoonists—and as the exhibit shows, he certainly came in for some merciless treatment. The first time he was ever upset by a a cartoon surprisingly was not one of himself but of one of his Cabinet Ministers—and a Labour one to boot. The culprit was Low, with a cartoon in the Evening Standard on 13 December 1940, making fun of Arthur Greenwood, then a Minister without Portfolio.

In a letter to Beaverbrook, Churchill wrote: “The cartoon in today’s Evening Standard against Greenwood will certainly make your path and mine more stony. I know the difficulty with Low, but others do not, and cartoons in your papers showing your colleagues in ridiculous guise will cause fierce resentment.”

For his eightieth birthday, Churchill was presented with two cartoons by Vicky and Low which he treasured—unlike the oil portrait of him by Graham Sutherland, to which he took an instant dislike: “a remarkable example of modern art….I look like a down and out drunk who had been picked out of the gutter in the Strand.”

In contrast, Vicky’s cartoon, which is exhibited (and on page 46) is a collection of portraits of Churchill in the style of famous artists and subtitled, “With apologies to Holbein, Rembrandt, Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Millais and Picasso.” Low’s watercolour of a room full of Winstons at different stages of his life, now a permanent exhibit at the new Churchill Museum, carries the charming caption: “To Winston, with affectionate birthday greetings from his old castigator—Low.” (This cartoon was reproduced in the color centerspread of Finest Hour 80.)

Among contentious Churchill cartoons, the exhibit hosts a very notorious one by Illingworth, on public display for the very first time. Published in Punch on 3 February 1954, it is entitled, “Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.” Churchill is shown listless at his desk, his face registering the unmistakable effects of a partial paralysis he had suffered the preceding summer. (See “The Cartoon That Shocked the P.M.” by the author, Finest Hour 113.)

Churchill was bitterly hurt by Illingworth, who had earlier produced several admiring cartoons: “Yes, there’s malice in it. Look at my hands—I have beautiful hands. Punch goes everywhere. I shall have to retire if this sort of thing goes on.” Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, was also shocked by what he considered a vicious caricature of the Prime Minister: “There was something un-English in this savage attack on his failing powers. The eyes were dull and lifeless. There was no tone in the flaccid muscles; the jowl sagged. It was the expressionless mask of extreme old age.”

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition including the author’s essay, “Low on Churchill.” Sotherans of Sackville Street are the sponsors of Churchill in Caricature.

The exhibit was opened on May 25th by The Lady Soames.


Dr. Benson is curator of the Political Cartoon Gallery, 32 Store Street, London WC1E 7BS. The gallery is open weekdays 9 am-5.30 pm and Saturdays 11am-5.30 pm. Nearest underground stop is Goodge Street Station (Northern Line). For further information email [email protected] or telephone (0207) 580-1114 or (07973) 622371.

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