29 Oct Winston Churchill

A politician, statesman, Prime Minister of the UK and artist. He was best known for his peppery speech as well as his love of good whiskey and cigars. We are now going to examine this erudite man from a different and more interesting angle - from the perspective of art.

Churchill took up painting as early as 1910 and he constantly returned to his hobby during his glamorous career. For the British statesman this hobby became a way of escaping from his stressful career as well as a source of delight. He was working with a naïve impressionist style that he significantly improved over time. Most of all, the politician loved to paint calm landscapes depicting village scenery which helped him cope with stress.

“Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time,” Churchill wore in his book Painting as a Pastime (1920).

Churchill eventually created 550 paintings, something that helped him improve his visual acuity, powers of observation and memory. His artistic distraction would have flourished even further had he not focused his career on other fields – a world-known writer, orator and political leader.

The prominent political figure was rather humble in his self-realisation as a painter – he took part in an international exhibition in Paris, signing his works with a fictitious name.

Churchill was highly productive over the next five decades. He painted landscapes and seascapes in the open air. And despite his claims of being just an amateur, he managed to develop an incredible flair for art.

Nevertheless, Churchill wanted to further improve his technique and started learning from the works of the best artists at the time. He admired the works of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masters such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse. It is even known that he travelled to the same places where they had created their works years ago, seeking the light and the land that had proven to be a source of inspiration…

“We cannot aspire to masterpiece,” Churchill wrote. – “We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint box. And, for this, Audacity is the only ticket.”