August 9, 2013

Finest Hour 120, Autumn 2003

Page 48

Oil Painting by Winston S. Churchill, 1938
Coombs 286, 24 x 36 inches, unsigned.
Inscribed on the reverse:
“Painted by my husband. Clementine S. Churchill”

Reproduced by courtesy of Wylma Wayne, Minnie Churchill and Churchill Heritage Ltd. A framed, limited edition of this painting is being presented to Benefactor registrants of the 20th International Churchill Conference in Bermuda in November 2003. A few remaining copies are available from The Churchill Centre in Washington. Please contact Daniel Myers, Executive Director.

Churchill painted “View of Chartwell” in 1938 from high on the hill to the left of today’s car park, his ponds in the foreground and the Weald of Kent stretching out behind. It was Churchill’s favorite vantage point to survey his estate. He once told his secretary Grace Hamblin, “You’re a fool if you haven’t been up there.”

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024

More

Recalling her memories of half a century at Chartwell for the Fourth International Churchill Conference in 1987, Miss Hamblin wrote:

“I knew Chartwell very well. Before Sir Winston bought it in 1922 it had been empty for seven years, and my friends and I had made a playground of the garden. I knew every nook and cranny and I loved it with all my heart. I’d always thought it the most beautiful place on earth. I still do.

“This was a feeling we all had at Chartwell in the 1930s. Although there was so much going on, it didn’t affect that lovely, warm place where his family were. When we were driving down, perhaps from a day in London and the House of Commons, as we got to the precinct, he’d cast everything aside. All the papers would go flying and the car rug on the floor; the dog would be pushed aside, the secretary pushed aside, everything pushed aside, ready to leap out. And he’d say, Ah, Chartwell.’ Personally I’d always felt the same and wanted to say, ‘Yes, Ah, Chartwell.’

“He was never happier than when he was there. So into this lovely, private world came peers and potentates as well as ordinary men, to discuss the threat of war, which was his main concern. There also came literary friends, political colleagues, painting friends and of course his family and friends of his children as well as his own generation. Of this period he was to write much later, ‘With my happy family around me, I dwelt in peace within my habitation.'”