Churchill The Painter

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31530, 18 November 1967, Page 4

Churchill The Painter

Churchill. His Paintings. Compiled by David Coombs. Hamish Hamilton. Illustrated. Index. 272 pp.

The production of this book illustrating all of Sir Winston Churchill’s known paintings and the listing of their owners can have been no mean undertaking for Mr David Coombs, assistant editor of “The Connoisseur.” Included are 502 paintings, 73 of them in colour, and the purpose of compiling them, with the approval of Churchill’s executors, was to establish a catalogue by which those not yet traced could later be judged and to endeavour to prevent fraudulent examples being produced. Churchill gave away onefifth of his paintings and to photograph and annotate them necessitated much travelling throughout Britain and in the United States. Another task—so well described in Mr Coombs’s excellent introduction—was to date the paintings. The variety of Churchill’s styles indicates the painters who were his friends and also his sensitivity to their ideas and techniques. The period of most of the paintings could be ascertained, but Churchill painted in different ways during a given period, or put a canvas away to be worked on and improved years later. To add to the compiler’s task many of them were not signed. In his “Painting as a Pastime,” Churchill showed what might be interpreted as an almost flippant attitude towards art Facetiousness is a common shield for sensitivity, however, and the maxim still holds that artists should be judged by what they produce and not by what they say about their work. As an artist Churchill suffered because of his fame as a statesman. He was not taken seriously, and it was often said that if they had not been his work his paintings would not have been hung in the Royal Academy. That initially they were presented for hang- : Ing under a pseudonym was ignored, and the injustice of

this sniping becomes apparent when one studies this book.

Churchill’s painting was not “modern art” He took up the brush seriously after he was forty, and that was more than fifty years ago. His artist friends who influenced him were themselves of an age not to have been impressed by the iconoclasm that followed Impressionism. The compiler reiterates that it is only reasonable to judge a picture by the artist’s own standards and ambitions, and not by what the viewer may find congenial or exciting. This is especially true in Churchill’s case. His paintings form a pictorial record of his personal, as distinct from his public, life. They are a record of a man off duty, but are obviously influenced by the opportunities of his political office. Many would not have been painted had he not found himself in certain parts of the world in the course of carrying out his public duties.

Churchill was fortunate to have been able to develop his talent, for escape to his easel at times of stress enabled him to relax. The resultant paintings show unexpected facets of his complex personality. With few exceptions, all his paintings are of tranquil landscapes, seascapes or portraits of his family and friends. Then there is his inquiring interest in the world around him and his innate appreciation of colour. He preferred oils but experimented with tempera. Having started to paint so late in life, he did not want to waste time learning draughtsmanship. Like many other professional artists, he used photographs as a convenient form of quick sketch, but one unusual method was to project slides on to a canvas. This mechanical aid helped him to produce pictures in the realistic tradition of art to which he subscribed. In spite of this means, there did not emerge a stereotyped style, however. There is a pleasing brightness about the majority of his paintings that is achieved by a restrained use of over-painting and

shadow. There is also the occasional “dynamic” painting of a storm or a sunset over the sea which appears to reflect the belligerency in the painter’s make-up, and here his use of impasto—noticeably absent in most of his work—is superb. In his paintings, as with his writing, Churchill was a perfectionist With unerring judgment he used his pallet to record a view of a quiet English country scene, a sundrenched corner of a Riviera villa or the aridity of North Africa. The English language has been compared with an oil painting for its richness of expression, its flexibility and its nuances. It is no wonder, therefore, that Churchill, a master of the English language, should have brought the same pattern of thought to his painting. Looking through this wellplanned book one gets the impression that the reproductions are the work of many artists, so varied are the styles of painting. There is no slavish copying of others, but one can see canvases that might have come from the studios of Utrillo, Canaletto, Monet, Cezanne, Pissarro or Corot And yet there is always the mark of Churchill—his composition was outstanding and his "finish” meticulous.

The coloured reproductions have been selected to show the whole range of Churchill’s art and his favourite subjects. Those who saw the small selection of his work in Christchurch a few years ago were given some appreciation of this range, and it is disappointing that “The Custody of the Child” is shown in monochrome. This picture—of two trees seemingly quarrelling over the sapling growing between them—was included in the Christchurch exhibition. It was an excellent example of Churchill’s wit, his treatment of trees (a particularly favourite subject) and of his panache.

This unique collection of his paintings reveals how Churchill'threw himself with his customary real into a pastime that absorbed him for nearly fifty years. Through the painstaking efforts of the compiler everyone can now, as it were, share in Churchill’s pleasure in his hobby.