Churchill’s art draws new fans decades after his death
Former British leader painted over 500 works, some of which are now selling for millions
Winston Churchill, whose fiery resolve and puckish impudence led many to embrace him as an inspiring, authentic, if imperfect, leader, never set out to become an accomplished artist. He only began painting as a respite from depression when, at age 40 in 1915, he resigned as the civilian head of Britain’s Royal Navy during World War I.
He had advocated the Allied navies open what turned out to be a disastrous front in the Dardanelles strait.
“Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time,” he later wrote.
But perseverance, which served Churchill well in other settings, also led him to become a reliable, productive performer with a brush who created more than 500 works. They are prized today, perhaps more for their authorship than their aesthetics, but they are nonetheless adept, often colorful, evocations of the world he witnessed and are seeing a recent uptick in interest and prices, according to some dealers, auction houses and art historians.
“A whole generation has discovered him,” said Timothy Riley, director and chief curator at America’s National Churchill Museum at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.
Three Churchills sold at auction last month, for prices that ranged from $376,000 to $630,000. Two were paintings that Churchill gave to Anthony Eden, who succeeded him as Britain’s prime minister in 1955 —
Still Life, Silver at Chartwell and The Canal at St-Georges-Motel
(circa 1930) — and were sold by Eden heirs at Christie’s London.
Last year, a new auction record was set for a work by Churchill when Tower of the Koutoubia
Mosque (1943), which depicts a view of Marrakech, Morocco, was sold at Christie’s in London for $11.5 million to a Belgian collector. The collector also bought two other works by Churchill at that same sale: Scene at Marrakesh
(1935) for $2.6 million, and St. Paul’s
Churchyard (1927), for $1.5 million. Churchill gave the Koutoubia Mosque painting, believed to be the only one he made during World War II, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a gift. He created it after the Casablanca Conference, where they decided to pursue the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers. After their meeting, Churchill and Roosevelt watched the sunset over Marrakech and the Atlas Mountains together.
Other recipients of Churchills included Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman, Queen Elizabeth II, Gen. George S. Marshall, David Lloyd George, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Clare Boothe Luce, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.
Last year, a painting that Churchill gave Aristotle Onassis, The
Moat, Breccles, a 1921 landscape, was sold by Onassis’ heirs for $1.85 million at a Phillips auction in New York. A spokesperson for Phillips said Churchill gave Onassis the painting in 1961 to mark their friendship and that the work had hung on Onassis’ yacht alongside works by El Greco, Gauguin and Pissarro.
According to Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings, by David Coombs with Minnie Churchill, another gift of a painting in the 1950s went to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, then-publisher of the
New York Times, to recognize his 20th anniversary in that role.
Churchill, who served as Britain’s prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955, had never planned to sell what he called his “little daubs.” He wrote early in his painting career to his aunt, Leonie Leslie, and said, “They’re too bad to sell and too dear for me to give.” But he eventually gave away at least 100 works to family, friends, colleagues, employees and foreign dignitaries.
Another 100 or so Churchill paintings are held today at Chartwell, the 80-acre estate in Kent in southeastern England that Churchill bought in 1922 and lived at until shortly before he died in 1965. The lush landscape of his property became a source of inspiration; Churchill built the garden walls himself and was pleased to be recognized as an honorary member of the bricklayers’ union. The estate is now preserved as a historic property by Britain’s National Trust.
Most of Churchill’s paintings are landscapes or still lifes — of roses, tulips, magnolias, lilies, orchids and daffodils, fruits and wine bottles. A still life that included bottles of whiskey and brandy sold for $1.3 million in 2020. He also made portraits, mainly of his family, but preferred landscapes. “A tree doesn’t complain that I haven’t done it justice,” he once said.