June 21, 2013

Finest Hour 137, Winter 2007-08

Page 14

Cover Story – “I Knew Sir Winston Well” / Churchill and Oscar Nemon

By James R. Lancaster

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Mr. Lancaster is a FH senior editor who lives in Normandy, France.

The dedication of the Sir Winston Churchill Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, on the morning of 28 April 1965, was a grand occasion. Presiding was the Hon. Robert Moses, President of the New York World’s Fair. The Carillon—God Save the Queen and The Star Spangled Banner—was followed by an address by the Hon. Averell Harriman. Then came a message from the President of the United States: “I join all of you here today in this dedication of spirit both to the man and to the meaning which his life exemplified.” The Pavilion had been funded by Joyce C. Hall of Hallmark cards (see next article).

Sarah Churchill, Lady Audley, then reached for the cord to reveal the statue of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, while Pomp and Circumstance rang out from the Carillon. This was followed by a Retreat of muffled drums by the Bahamas Police Band, flown up from Nassau for the ceremonies.

The sculptor of the statue, Oscar Nemon, was also on hand. He said later that he created the statue—with the same bulldog expression as the statue in the House of Commons—in less than three weeks: “I knew Sir Winston well. You know, he did a sculpture of me, too. Out of vengeance.” This bronze head of Nemon by sculptor Winston Churchill was also on exhibit in the pavilion rotunda.

“I knew Sir Winston well.” This is the key to the extraordinary story of Churchill and Nemon.

At last count more than forty-five people have sculpted Churchill in the last half century, from Vincent Apap to Astrid Zydower. Their busts and statues are many and varied. But Nemon was the only sculptor to establish an enduring personal friendship, not only with Sir Winston but with the whole Churchill family.

Oscar Nemon was born in Croatia in 1906. He started experimenting with sculpture when he was fourteen. In 1923, when he was only seventeen, he left for the wider horizons of Vienna. There he sculpted Sigmund Freud from life, the only person ever to have been granted this honour. In the 1930s he moved briefly to Paris, then to Brussels. In 1939, the storm clouds gathering, he moved to England, which became his home for the rest of his life. He died in Oxford in 1985, having sculpted the Queen, Eisenhower, Truman, Montgomery and many others from his Boars Hill studio. The first Churchill Centre tour party were treated to tea by the Nemons in 1983, their garden a kind of “Easter Island” of Churchill heads and statues.

Although Nemon had several opportunities of seeing Churchill during the war, albeit at a distance, his break came in Marrakesh in December 1950, when the Churchill party descended on the Hotel de la Mamounia for a working holiday. From 17 December 1950 to their departure on 20 January 1951 they took six rooms on the verandah.

One of Nemon’s friends, the French psychoanalyst Rene Laforgue, had booked a couple of rooms in the hotel for his family. A few days before Christmas, Laforgue cabled Nemon to say that one of the rooms was available because his sons had decided to stay in France for the season’s festivities. Nemon left immediately for the Mamounia, where Laforgue reserved a table near the Churchills.

As the days went by Nemon made mental notes, from which he made a small sculpture of Churchill’s head in his room. It so happened that another friend of Nemon’s, Sylvia Henley, arrived at the hotel a few days later. Sylvia was President of the Allies Club in London, where Nemon had often lunched during the war. She was also a cousin and close friend of Clementine. When Nemon told her about the bust in his hotel room, she asked to see it. She was most enthusiastic about it, taking it away to show to Clementine. A few hours later Nemon received the following note:

Upon receipt of this note Nemon was moved to present the bust to Clementine Churchill, asking if he could do other studies of her husband, perhaps while WSC was painting. She agreed, sending him her thanks on 15 January: “I had no time before leaving for Tinherir to reply to your letter. It is indeed generous of you to wish to give me that beautiful little bust of my husband. I shall always treasure it.”

Thus began the Nemon-Churchill friendship— despite WSC reminding him of the American portrait painter John Singer Sargent’s advice, “If you want to lose a friend, do his portrait.”

Nemon knew that Churchill would be a reluctant sitter, and he may possibly have known about WSC’s riposte when a statue of him was proposed in 1944. As recounted in Martin Gilbert’s recently published Churchill and the Jews, the idea had come from Harold Laski, son of Nathan Laski, whom Churchill had first met in 1904 when considering standing for Manchester North-West (which he won in January 1906).

In September 1944 Harold Laski wanted the nation to erect a statue in Churchill’s honour after the war. Churchill thanked him for the kind thought, but felt that a park in one of the heavily bombed areas of south London would be a more fitting memorial.

The breakthrough came in 1952. The Queen said she wanted to have a marble bust of Churchill, who was now Prime Minister again, for Windsor Castle. She wanted the white marble bust to be placed in the Armoury, alongside the bust of the Duke of Marlborough, Churchill’s famous ancestor.

Although Nemon was not a member of the Royal Academy, it was Churchill’s express wish that Nemon should be given the commission. There followed several sittings, at Chequers and at 10 Downing Street. The sitter was “bellicose, challenging and deliberately provocative.” Nemon made three heads at the same time, each one representing a different aspect of Churchill’s character. Nemon recounts what happened next in his unpublished memoirs:

Churchill rarely made appointments with me, but one day he did so, and he was obviously in a tense mood. My heart sank as he entered the room and strode over to the three shrouded heads. He pointed to the nearest and roared “Show it to me.”

I uncovered it— the most dramatic of the three. I could see his anger rising and I waited for the outburst. It soon came “You think I look like a crafty shifty war-monger do you? Is that what you think?” I hurriedly said that I had not intended to give that impression but had tried to bring out his determination and purpose. He gave further vent to his wrath with some explanatory remarks about his “bulldog” image, an attitude he struck for the morale of the nation, saying that he was not just a ferocious watchdog but a man compounded of many qualities including about fifty percent humour.

He demanded to be shown the second head. This satisfied him no better. He found the expression too “intimate” for his taste and said that he wanted a portrait that would convey his features but make no statement; in short, a “well-mannered and civilized portrait in the style of the Old Masters.”

Fortunately, the third head was satisfactory. He conceded it to be “civilized” and that is the one I carved; it stands in Windsor Castle today.

After he had stormed out, I was sitting in an armchair in a thoroughly depressed state, wondering whether the best course would be for me to destroy the three models, when the door opened and Churchill came back in. His temper had evaporated completely and he apologized at once. He was extravagant in praise of my work. “Why, man, you’re a genius!” he said He told me later that he felt it a greater honour that she [the Queen] should want to have this bust in Windsor Castle than that she should confer on him the Order of the Garter.

Contemporary press reports, cut out and saved by Nemon, and now held within the Nemon Archive at Churchill Archives Centre, demonstrate how the process of sculpting Churchill immediately became part of the mythology surrounding the former war leader. A story in the Daily Telegraph circa 1953 reads:

Oscar Nemon does not know exactly how many [busts] he will have to sculpt before he achieves his aim: a sculpture of Sir Winston Churchill which is not merely a likeness but a biography of his life. He admits that the Prime Minister is one of the most difficult subjects he has ever had. He has had to work swiftly, for few of the sittings in the private room at 10 Downing Street have been for as long as 15 minutes. Sculptor Nemon thinks that the Prime Minister has many moods, all clearly defined because he is a man of such powerful character. Rarely has he seen the same mood twice. Nor can he sit for too long. He is too active, too dynamic. And he will not surrender his personality to the artist, as a subject should.

The ongoing collaboration between Nemon and Churchill was, in Nemon’s words, “The unique opportunity I have had of studying the very complex character of one of the most remarkable personalities of all time.”

As Nemon continued to work on the Windsor bust, encouragement came from many quarters. For example, Owen Morshead, the Librarian at Windsor Castle, wrote to Nemon on 8 May 1954: “How good that you have made another entry into the lion’s cage. I hope you did not get mauled by either the lion or the lioness. The former will be here for the great Garter Ceremony on June 14. Is it too much, I fear, to hope that we may have the bust here by then?”

It was too much to hope, but finally, in July 1956, the bust was delivered to Windsor Castle. Owen Morshead wrote to Nemon on 21 July 1956: “Her Majesty instantly exclaimed ‘But I think it is excellent, don’t you?’ It was evident that she really does regard it as a success and a desirable acquisition.”

In 1954, while sitting for the Guildhall statue, Churchill was persuaded by Nemon to try his hand at sculpture. In a press cutting at the time, Nemon said, “I think he would be much happier if he could sculpt himself while I am working.”

We agreed that we should model each other at work. He felt he would be getting his own back at me in this way, and so our duel began. We had not been at work long when he became excited about the difficulties in which he found himself.

His cigar began to come to pieces in his mouth, and soon he was roaring like a lion over its prey. He shouted at me, “How can I work when you keep moving?”

Nemon had Churchill’s image of him cast in bronze, writing to him, “I beg you not to underrate the artistic value of this work which would be considered by any expert as outstanding for the first attempt.” The original plaster cast of Winston’s head of Nemon is in the Studio at Chartwell. An excellent colour plate can be found on page 193 of Lady Soames’s book Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter.

Sir Winston not only sculpted Nemon, he also sketched him. Nemon recounted the occasion in a letter to Bart Watt, founder of the Toronto-based Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy in 1984:

The Guildhall statue was commissioned by the Corporation of London in 1954 to mark WSC’s eightieth birthday. At the unveiling ceremony on 21 June 1955 he said: “I greatly admire the art of Oscar Nemon…it seems to me to be such a very good likeness.. .but on this point I cannot claim to be either impersonal or impartial.”

Nemon’s relationship with Churchill started as one between sculptor and sitter, but soon developed into a real friendship between two remarkable men, evidenced by the trust shown in Nemon by Churchill in this extract from Nemon’s unpublished memoirs:

I was a guest one day at Chequers with Field Marshal Sir William Slim, an impressive figure in full military uniform and with a record of outstanding achievement in the Far East. I had had the privilege of being present on other occasions when matters of world importance were under discussion, and this was certainly one of them. As the discussion became more political I began to feel an intruder, and I said as much, asking to be excused. I was told “If you are a friend, stay!” Then Sir Winston said: “Field Marshal, I’m sending you to Egypt, and I want to make one point clear. I am a Zionist and I want to act accordingly.” I was flabbergasted—that Churchill should be so brave, saying that he was a Zionist at a time when no other world politician would have dared.

Nemon’s enduring relationship with Winston Churchill produced over fifty busts and statues, located today around the world, from Kansas City to Monaco, from Edmonton to Copenhagen. It was a relationship which was doubly providential. It helped Nemon to become one of the most renowned portrait sculptors of the twentieth century. It also allowed him to grant Winston Churchill, whose “monumental” spirit he so admired, a multi-dimensional immortality—in plaster, bronze and marble.

Grateful Thanks

In the preparation of this article the author acknowledges the assistance of Lady Young, Nemon’s elder daughter, and of Alice Nemon Stuart, the widow of Nemon’s son Falcon. Lady Young provided important material from her own papers, while Alice Nemon Stuart kindly made available her detailed and fascinating chronology of the working relationship between Nemon and Churchill in the 1950s.

The author also acknowledges the assistance of Allen Packwood and Katharine Thomson at the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, where the papers of the Nemon Estate are held. These papers were given to the Churchill Archives Centre in 2003 by Alice Nemon Stuart. The papers were catalogued by archivists Katharine Thomson and Sandra Marsh between February 2004 and August 2005.

Extracts from Nemon’s unpublished autobiography are quoted by permission of the copyright holder, Alice Nemon Stuart, on behalf of the Nemon Estate, as also by permission of the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge.