May 14, 2014

By: Merry L. Alberigi

Ms. Alberigi chaired two Churchill Conferences and was a director of the International Churchill Society from 1988 through 1995. This article appeared in Finest Hour 85, Winter 1994-95.

For more than forty years Sir Winston Churchill found contentment in his painting pastime. The hobby he had begun on a lark one summer afternoon proved to be his constant companion until the final years of his life. Yet, as important as it was to him, this fascinating aspect of his life remained relatively unknown for years. Gradually, not the least through publication of his 1921 essay, Painting As a Pastime, in book form in 1948, people realized that he was a prolific and talented painter. One accepts the concept of a statesman painting as a hobby but few expect to admire the results of his efforts. As in so many things, Churchill was an exception.

Churchill hesitated to seek public appraisals of his art. The first public exhibition of his paintings was under an assumed name, Charles Morin,1 in France. The pseudonym eliminated the prejudice that would derive from his own name, ensuring that evaluations were neither too solicitous nor, perhaps, too unkind. Years later, he sent his first submission to the Royal Academy under another pseudonym. Finally, his confidence developed, he exhibited under his name, although only a few major shows were held in his lifetime.

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How does one objectively evaluate the art of a famous statesman? One may study the reviews and comments of acknowledged art experts and other artists to form a more complete impression of his artistic talents. One can also consider the art institutions that have displayed his paintings or made them part of their permanent collections – the Royal Academy and the Tate Gallery, London; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Museum of Art in Sao Paolo, Brazil; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His association with these prestigious organizations gives credibility to Churchill’s work as an artist.

Over the years Churchill’s paintings have been reviewed by many art critics, and his work has been displayed in art galleries and exhibitions in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the United States. According to Max Wykes-Joyce of Arts Review, who reviewed a 1977 Churchill showing at M. Knoedler’s art gallery in London, “Sir Winston is a very considerable artist indeed; and nowhere is he less than a good workmanlike painter.”2

In his book, The Life of a Painter, John Lavery offered even greater tribute:

I know few amateur wielders of the brush with a keener sense of light and colour, or a surer grasp of essentials … he with his characteristic fearlessness and freedom from convention, has time and again shown me how I should do things. Had he chosen painting instead of statesmanship I believe he would have been a great master with the brush, … 3

His art appealed to the public. A 1958 exhibit, arranged by Hallmark Greeting Card Company, of thirty-five paintings in Kansas City, Missouri, drew 5,427 visitors on its opening day. His first American exhibition, also his first one-man show, proved a success. The Kansas City Times reported: “Never in the history of the [Nelson] Art Gallery, have so many passed through in a single day …. It was the familiarity with the name Churchill that attracted many people to the exhibit.” Nevertheless, the reviewer continued, “Those who paused in front of the colorful, slightly photographic works of Sir Winston expressed satisfaction and pleasure at what they saw.”4

The gallery’s director, Laurence Sickman, declared, “In the main, he is a firm realist. His trees look like trees and his houses look like houses, … A single glance at his works convinces one that he has a deep love of color, brilliant color,”5 Conversely, Field Marshal Alexander, a fellow painter and colleague, felt strongly about Churchill’s choice of hues: “He loved colours, and used far too many. That’s why his paintings are so crude. He couldn’t resist using all the colours on his palette.”6

In a review of Churchill’s one-man exhibition at the Royal Academy’s Diploma Gallery in London in 1959, Pierre Jeannerat, the Daily Mail art critic, wrote: “Sir Winston has considerable natural gifts of visual sensibility, and, as might be expected, character and bold ness …. Colour, singing colour, is the major impression one gets on entering the show, and the lingering recollection one takes away.”7

The 1959 exhibition was only the fifth retrospective Of a living artist to be held at the Academy. Sixty-one paintings were shown in the Diploma Gallery; thirty- five had recently returned from a tour in America and the others were chosen from the Chartwell collection.8 London art critic John London commented, “Every- body seemed bowled over by those bright, strong, con- fident pictures … [Even the artists who were present agreed,] ‘At least a dozen of these pictures will stand against any of the best impressionists.’ ” 9

As with all art and artists, however, Churchill had his detractors. Eric Newton, art critic for The Sunday Times, London, wrote in 1949:

Had he signed his pictures “Jones,” the critic would still find himself pausing in front of them … He would probably diagnose an able but unimaginative artist thoroughly trained in his craft at an art school: a technician of more than average ability …. ‘°

A critical biographer, Robert Payne claimed that Churchill was not a very good painter

or even a very remarkable one. He could never paint a portrait; when he placed people in his landscapes they had neither bones nor flesh; but he could paint flowers and landscapes with conviction …. He could dominate vast spaces; but little spaces disturbed and annoyed him. Humanity had little place in the painter’s imagination.11

A review of Churchill’s work belies this criticism, as people do figure in his paintings. While he painted few portraits (“Trees do not complain,” he often remarked), the results are worthy of more generous assessment. Generally, Churchill used human figures to dramatize size and scale of a scene, or to show movement. He painted these figures using a style he had developed while in the company of artists schooled in impressionism. From these artists he learned to paint figures as forms composed of a collection of loosely interlocking brush strokes.

Sutton, the noted art critic of Apollo magazine, commented on Churchill’s “achievement as an amateur; he would never have claimed a higher status than this.” For Churchill, Sutton went on, painting was relaxation: “for many statesmen and warriors of the past … works of art have provided a solace after their other preoccupations.”12 Sutton and other critics classified him as a “holiday painter.”13 Art News critic Aaron Berkman concurred that Churchill’s work is seen as “true vacation painting … a resuscitating act, a physically and mentally recuperative process.”14

The Sunday Times art critic Eric Newton felt that because of the nature of Churchill’s painting “he may produce delightful and even subtly observed pictures, but they will lack the ultimate magic of the artist who has spent his life searching for the hidden beauty that nature reveals only to her full-time admirers.”15 Newton argued that Churchill’s temperament limited his accomplishments but not his skills. He chose to paint only beautiful scenes which showed that his “only serious fault as an artist is his ‘tourist’s eye.’ “16

Most critics shared the opinion that, while Churchill did not rank among the great master artists, his work had distinct merit. In 1982, Royal Academy of Art President Sir Hugh Casson labeled Churchill “an amateur of considerable natural ability who, had he had the time [to study and practice] could have held his own with most professionals … especially as a colourist.”17 Martin Gilbert, his official biographer, thought that Churchill “was the absolute romantic. His paintings reflect this [with their images celebrating life and its natural beauty]. There are no monotones – each stroke of his brush added shimmering light and colour. And everything he painted or wrote, his very gestures, was invested with emotionalism.”18

Many people were prepared to find fault with Sir Winston’s paintings, believing their popularity to be due solely to his notoriety. They were surprised to find his work artistically appealing. David Coombs, the compiler of the only complete catalogue of Churchill’s paintings, felt that” … no one can fail to have been impressed by the bravura and distinction of Sir Winston’s paintings, when examples of the best of his work have hung without embarrassment among illustrious artistic company in the London auction rooms.19 In addition to the 1959 retrospective, an exhibition of Churchill’s work was held annually at the Royal Academy from 1947 to 1964.20 This prestigious organization recognized his painting skill by electing him Honorary Academician Extraordinary in 1948, a tribute unprecedented in the Academy’s history.

Churchill had recognizable talent, but there is no doubt that the enormous sums of money paid for his paintings have been due largely to his fame. Who wouldn’t place a high value on something created by “WSC”? Naturally, the price is high, given the eminence of the artist. As reported in Apollo in 1977:

The astonishing sum of £148,000 paid recently for a painting by Sir Winston sent for sale by Baroness Spencer-Churchill was the product of circums tances going beyond the judgement of art. We have here not a great master, rather a very talented amateur.21

In May 1965, his work was included in the collection of paintings auctioned by Sotheby’s in London, and at its New York subsidiary, the Parke-Bernet Gallery, on the first trans-Atlantic televised art auction. A satellite linked the two galleries with participants able to bid at each end simultaneously in pounds or dollars. A Texas oil millionaire bought Churchill’s “Menaggio, Lake Como” for $39,200.22 According to The New York Times, this amount “was $13,200 higher than the price paid last month for the first picture by Churchill to be auctioned in this country. The work ‘Canal Scene’ was bought at Parke-Bernet for $26,000 by the Hallmark Foundation of Kansas City, Mo.”23 When Dr. Arthur Frankfurter, editor of Art News magazine, bid for the paintings, the inevitable question arose, “was it the measure of the man, or the measure of the man as an artist that caused you to buy this?” He answered, “Well, I should think it was both. The measure of the man as the artist is a little hard to estimate at this short distance from his career …. the only answer I could give was I knew of no painter who would make as good a prime minister.”24

Since Churchill’s death in 1965, his paintings have been exhibited in fifteen well-attended shows from London to San Francisco to Tokyo, including two in 1992: at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, and the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Twenty-nine years after his death Churchill’s art continues to provide enjoyment, as it brought joy to him for more than forty years.

He would ask no more than this, for Churchill did not paint for public acclaim, though he certainly enjoyed the attention his works received. He painted for the relaxation and joy it provided him. “Thus has Sir Winston sought refuge from his world involvement, and found health and peace in nature’s world.”25 He did not want to become a master painter. he found joy in the process:

“I do not presume to explain how to paint, but only how to get enjoyment,” he wrote in Painting as a Pastime. “Do not tum the superior eye of critical passivity upon these efforts …. We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.”26

FOOTNOTES
‘January 1921 exhibition, Galerie Druet, 20 Rue Royale, Paris.
Howard LaFay, “Be Ye Men of Valour,” National Geographic 128,
August 1965, p. 181. Also, Mary Soames, Winston Churchill – His
Life as a Painter, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), p. 38.
Note: Morin also spelled “Maurin.”
‘Max Wykes-Joyce, “Winston Churchill, Knoedler Gallery, London:
Exhibition Review,” Arts Review (U .K.), 13May1977, pp. 320-322.
‘John Lavery, The Life of a Painter (London: Cassell, 1940), p. 177, as
quoted in Soames, His Life as a Painter, pp. 23-24.
‘”Churchill Art Sets a Record,” Kansas City Times, 27 January 1958.
‘”Churchill Art Premiere Set in Kansas City.” Carl Byoir & Associates
Press Release for Hallmark Cards, lnc., 19 January, 1958, p. 3.
‘Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume VIII, “Never Despair,”
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), p. 142. Recollections
of Field Marshal Lord Alexander of Tunis.
‘Pierre Jeannerat, “Such great fun!” Daily Mail, 3 November 1959, p. 4.
‘Royal Academy, Winston Churchill: Honorary Academican Extraordinary
(London: William Clowes and Sons Limited, 1959).
‘John London, “Churchill – the great amateur,” News Chronicle, 3
November 1959.
‘°Eric Newton, “Churchill the Artist – An Evaluation,” New York
Times Magazine, 2 January 1949, p. 20.
“Robert Payne, The Great Man: A Portrait of Winston Churchill (New
York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1974), p. 33.
“Denys Sutton, “Sir Winston as a Painter,” Apollo (U.K.), March 1965,
p. 170.
“Sutton, “Sir Winston as a Painter,” p. 170.
“Aaron Berkman, “Sir Winston Churchill, Vacation Painter.” Art
News, September 1958.
“Newton, “Churchill the Artist,” p. 20.
“Ibid., p. 20.
Sir Winston Churchill, Exhibition of Paintings, 24 June to 30 July 1982,
catalogue from Wylma Wayne Fine Art, London, England, p. 1.
“Gilbert in the official biography.
“David Coombs, Churchill, His Paintings (New York: World Publishing
Company, 1967), p. 12.
20Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905-1970 Volume 1 A-D. From records of
the Royal Academy, London, England.
“Helen Mullaly, “Jubilee Enjoyments”, Apollo (U.K.) May 1977, p. 388.
“Sotheby’s Sales. From the records of Sotheby’s, London, England.
“”TV Satellite Links Art Buyers Here to London Sale,” New York
Times, 25 May 1965, p. 13.
“”Winston Churchill Painting Sold,” Carl Byoir and Associates press
release for Hallmark Cards, lnc., 15 April 1965.
“Berkman, “Sir Winston Churchill,” p. 14.

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