The prestigious auction house Sotheby's in London sold one of his works in 2014 for the sum of one million eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, two million euros in exchange. That a painter's paintings reach these market figures after his disappearance is relatively common, but it is less common that the author did not die experiencing difficulties and, of course, that during his lifetime he was famous for a very different activity. The painting to which we refer was executed by the hand of Winston Churchill, statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Churchill's passion for painting is far less well known than his devotion to writing. According to his biographers, just as the latter flowed naturally from his pen, almost like an extension of his thought, the art of oil and brush was always a challenge for him, as well as a refuge during the worst bumps. of his career. “Painting came to my rescue in the most difficult moments”, he wrote in a short essay from 1920, titled Painting as a Pastime.
One of those moments was, without a doubt, the one that made him take up his brushes for the first time. It happened when the politician was already forty years old: Churchill had just received a severe setback after the disastrous campaign of the Dardanelles during the First World War, especially after he ordered the attack on Gallipoli, with catastrophic consequences. So much so that he was demoted from the post of First Lord of the Admiralty in May 1915. Depression and anxiety set in. However, he found in painting an unexpected antidote against them.
It seems that the suggestion that he take a canvas and start painting came from his sister-in-law, Lady Gwendoline Bertie, who was an artist. An admirer of the Impressionists – whom he more or less imitated at first, before moving towards a more abstract style towards the end of his life – Churchill received the advice and support of the painters Walter Richard Sickert and William Nicholson, who were part of from his circle of friends. However, most of the time he ignored his lessons. In this sense, the quote attributed to him is famous: "I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like to be taught."
The fact is that the statesman took his new hobby so seriously that in 1921 he even sent several of his works to an exhibition at the Druet Gallery in Paris, although under the pseudonym Charles Winter. Years later he did the same with the London Royal Academy of Arts, this time becoming David Winter. But the institution discovered who was hiding behind that alias and named him an Honorary Academician, going so far as to organize a solo exhibition of his work in 1958.
Prolific like few others, taking into account his State obligations over the years, he came to paint more than five hundred paintings, all full of extreme colors, dazzling to the point of impossibility. “I rejoice in bright tones and sincerely lament poor browns,” he comments in Painting as a Pastime. The use and abuse of intense colors could be explained by the need to use paint as a method to lift his mood, the famous depression to which we have referred and to which he called, with the familiarity of an inevitable comrade, " the black dog”.
Instead, the blame for his predilection for powerful strokes is attributed to Sir John Lavery, another painter friend of the family who surprised him with a blank canvas during a visit, early in his adventure with oils and turpentines.
Churchill was in the garden of his country house in Kent, known as Chartwell, as he always preferred to paint landscapes in the open air. When Lavery arrived and saw him indecisive, he snatched the brush from her and launched intense strokes on the canvas. Winston took note and made the fierce brushstroke his trademark. Chartwell's residence, today managed by the National Trust, is open to visitors, who enjoy the many works that decorate his painter's studio.
Churchill's niece, Clarissa Eden, wife of former English Prime Minister Anthony Eden, loved to poke around in her uncle's studio, whom she found fascinating, but also "a terrible painter, with no sense of beauty." . According to Eden, Countess of Avon, "Her pictures of him were lovely, but he was no esthete." These statements she made in 2019, on the occasion of the sale of the last painting that Churchill painted before his death. It was Chartwell's Goldfish Pond, which the retired politician gave to his bodyguard.
The auction of the painting – which on this occasion was awarded for €400,000 – reopened the debate on whether the politician was really a good artist or if his works were simply valued for the relevance of his figure. Frances Christie, head of Sotheby's modern art department, settled the debate by highlighting the elegance and abstraction displayed in this late work.
And he pointed out another interesting topic: in his opinion, painting was the antidote that Churchill needed to endure public life, but behind the practical part there was a high sensitivity, which is witnessed by the notes he left on how to find balance. between elements and colors when facing a composition.
In his opinion, in many ways, his way of approaching the paint was very similar to the way he had of planning an offense. And he was not wrong, since he himself once compared the role of a general in combat with that of the artist in front of the work that is about to begin. There are also chroniclers who say that the painting helped Churchill to be more observant: this is why, during the Battle of Britain in 1940, he wanted to go to the front lines himself. Seeing the details for himself helped him make better decisions.
As a general rule, Winston Churchill painted when he was on vacation or in moments of political defeat –often the former were a consequence of the latter–, as evidenced by the number of works produced during his three-week stay in Italy in 1945, where he took a break after losing the election. However, there is only one work that he executed in the middle of World War II, in very special circumstances.
In 1943, the allies met in Casablanca to plan the strategy that would lead them to defeat Nazi Germany. At the end of the conference, Churchill insisted that Roosevelt accompany him to Marrakech, since for him it was unthinkable that the American would leave Morocco without visiting the city. On a headlong two-day jaunt, the US president was dragged to Villa Taylor, owned by a New York family next to Majorelle Garden, which would become a museum by designer Yves Saint Laurent.
A couple of men had to carry Roosevelt (partially paralyzed from polio) to the top of the villa's tower to watch the sunset over the Atlas Mountains. He loved the experience, and Churchill wanted to record that moment by later painting a painting that reproduced that view to give it to him.
It seems that another president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, upon learning of the story, began to take an interest in painting for the same therapeutic purposes as Churchill, to the point of ordering a studio to be built to practice his new hobby in the White House.
Churchill's episode with Roosevelt in Marrakech may seem eccentric, but it is less so when one knows that his idyll with the city had begun much earlier, in 1935, during another of the "vacations" of the former Prime Minister of Great Britain in Two occasions. In this case, the reason for discouragement that prompted him to travel was Stanley Baldwin's refusal to give him a post in his cabinet. Revenge would come years later: Churchill attributed Baldwin's conciliatory attitude with Hitler to the fact that the Germans believed that Great Britain would not react if attacked.
After his first visit, the statesman adopted the habit of taking time every winter in Marrakech, although he also frequented, brush at the ready, Egypt, Italy and the south of France. All this before, at the end of his life, he returned to the familiar landscapes of Kent and Chartwell, which, according to his relatives, amounted to a veritable internal exile.
This text is part of an article published in number 624 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
