September 28, 2022

A History of Churchill Paintings Exhibitions

Finest Hour 194, Fourth Quarter 2021

Page 16

By Timothy Riley

Timothy Riley is Sandra L. and Monroe E. Trout Director and Chief Curator at America’s National Churchill Museum at Westminster College.


On 23 October 1955, Miss Gertrude Jeans, aged seventy-one, of Croydon wrote to Sir Gerald Kelly, the past president of London’s Royal Academy of Arts: “Please forgive a stranger for troubling you on a matter which may not be within your province at all, but I do not know to whom more fittingly I can address myself on a subject which has long been on my mind. It is with reference to Sir Winston Churchill’s paintings.”1

Miss Jeans appreciated the academy’s effort to display the occasional Churchill painting, but desired more. She noted, “the few meagre annual exhibits at the Royal Academy give but little idea of the wealth of pictures that would delight so many to view….” She had something grander in mind. Miss Jeans acknowledged that, for the lofty academy, Churchill’s status as an amateur artist might be a roadblock, one she navigated around while stating her case for Churchill: “I suppose the formal answer to this scheme will probably be ‘Sir Winston is not a professional painter.’ But he was acknowledged as ‘R. A. Extraordinary’ and is not everything about him extraordinary?” she asked, adding: “‘Come to that,’ he is not a professional saviour of civilization either, yet is freely acknowledged as such the world over.”2

Intrigued by the idea of an exhibition of Churchill’s works, Sir Gerald took it upon himself to ask the artist directly. Churchill’s response was swift, concise, and clear: “My dear Sir Gerald, Thank you for your kind suggestion, but I do not contemplate such a display in my lifetime. Yours very sincerely, Winston S. Churchill”3

2024 International Churchill Conference

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

Gertrude Jeans—and the public—would have to wait a few years more.

A Presidential Plea

Two years later, in 1957, Churchill received another request to display his “daubs,” as he often called his paintings. This time the request came from the White House, where Churchill’s former comrade-in-arms, President Dwight Eisenhower, also frequently practiced as an amateur painter. Eisenhower appealed to his old friend’s desire to sustain and strengthen Anglo-American relations—through art.

While the plea came from the president, the idea to organize a Churchill exhibition was not Eisenhower’s. The driving force was Kansas City businessman Joyce “J. C.” Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards. Hall, a Nebraskan-turned-Missourian, first encountered Churchill when he attended the statesman’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Three years after that speech, Hall successfully negotiated with Churchill in 1949 to present several of the statesman’s paintings where a vast audience would see them: on Christmas cards. Hall paid $37,000 for the rights to reproduce five images, which were first used on cards during the 1949 Christmas season. Hallmark reported 4.5 million orders from stores nationwide. Having successfully established a business relationship with Churchill, Hall tried, in vain, to convince Churchill to allow an exhibition of his paintings. The greeting-card magnate visited Chartwell in 1950 with hopes that Churchill might consent.

to an exhibition or even offer him a painting for his own collection.4 Hall returned to the United States empty-handed—no exhibition, no painting.5 In the spring of 1957, undaunted—and with the president’s full support— Hall personally delivered Eisenhower’s letter to Churchill. At last, Churchill agreed. A hastily organized exhibition tour was scheduled for early 1958.

A North American Tour

To assist with the exhibition, Hall enlisted Alfred Frankfurter, the well-connected editor of Art News, America’s oldest art magazine. He also recruited Annemarie Pope of the Smithsonian Institution to help with logistics and scheduling. British Ambassador to the United States Sir Harold Caccia and American Ambassador to Britain John Hay Whitney provided support from both sides of the Atlantic. Churchill’s private secretary Anthony Montague-Browne served as an important liaison for the exhibition tour, which was scheduled to begin in Kansas City and proceed to other cities across North America.

Meanwhile, at Chartwell, thirty-five paintings were selected by Churchill’s wife Clementine, with advice from their daughter Sarah. The works selected represented five decades of Churchill’s artistic output, including some of his most compelling canvases: Plugstreet (1916), Winter Sunshine, Chartwell (1924–25), Tapestries at Blenheim (ca. 1933), Valley of the Ourika and Atlas Mountains (1948), and the recent picture View of La Pausa, Roquebrune (1957).

The exhibition opened to record crowds on 22 January 1958 at Kansas City’s William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (now the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art). President Eisenhower wrote the foreword to the illustrated souvenir catalogue, which also contained an essay by Alfred Frankfurter. Frankfurter, an art historian, wrote glowingly about Churchill’s work: “It would be difficult to find better testimony to how painting can teach a man to see—to catch hold forever of those exquisitely subtle details most men pass day after day without ever noticing. In the hands of a man who has learned to see all of life in both surface and depth, Sir Winston Churchill’s avocation has attained a poetry in its own right.”6

The day of the opening, the museum sent a cable to Churchill: “Your pastime paintings have delighted the largest audience ever to attend an exhibition opening at the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City. Please accept our sincere gratitude for honoring America, our city and the museum with the loan of this distinguished collection.”7

After its premiere in Kansas City, the exhibition traveled to other prestigious venues, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Gallery of Toronto, and the Smithsonian Institution. It drew record crowds at each venue. The Met in New York noted in its Bulletin: “During March we presented a selection of Sir Winston Churchill’s paintings, an exhibition that broke all attendance records and brought many people to all parts of the Museum.”8

What Gertrude Jeans dreamed about for London, a “wealth of pictures that would delight so many to view,” became a reality in the United States and Canada. After a successful run in North America, the exhibition toured Australia and New Zealand, creating a rippling “wave of good will” not only in the United States, but across the globe.

The successful tour of North America and the Antipodes finally led to the exhibit at the Royal Academy first suggested by Miss Jeans and described in the preceding article by Sir David Cannadine, but there would not be another major exhibition of Churchill’s paintings in his lifetime.

Exhibitions after Churchill’s Death

Back in the United States, Hall continued to champion Churchill’s artistic accomplishments and presented a popular documentary, The Other World of Winston Churchill, for Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was broadcast on Sir Winston’s ninetieth birthday in 1964. Shortly after Churchill’s death two months later, Hall acquired four Churchill paintings, adding to the one Churchill had finally given him nearly a decade earlier. Hall’s five Churchill paintings were then displayed in 1965 at a special Churchill Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York City.

Sponsored by People-to-People, an organization established by Dwight Eisenhower and dedicated to international understanding, the exhibit included faithful recreations of Churchill’s study at Chartwell as well as a model of Blenheim Palace, Churchill’s birthplace, and depictions of Bladon, where Churchill is buried. Churchill’s paintings were a highlight of the World’s Fair, which also included other artistic treasures. The Spanish Pavilion included paintings by El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, and Picasso. The Vatican pavilion showcased Michelangelo’s sculptural masterpiece, Pietà. Churchill’s paintings kept good company.

In the decade following Churchill’s death, an exhibition of his paintings was displayed at the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States (now America’s National Churchill Museum) in Fulton. The exhibition included, for what was likely its first public display, Churchill’s celebrated The Tower of Koutoubia Mosque (1943). The work, a gift to President Franklin Roosevelt, was the only canvas Churchill painted during the Second World War.

In the final decades of the twentieth century, a dozen or so other exhibitions of Churchill’s work were organized, including exhibits in Tokyo, San Francisco, and London. In 1983, Painting as a Pastime: The Paintings of Winston S. Churchill, organized by the Royal Oak Foundation, appeared at the National Academy of Design in New York and The Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The show was curated by Churchill’s granddaughters Celia and Edwina Sandys. Other Churchill exhibitions appeared in 1992 at the presidential libraries for Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, NY and Ronald Reagan in Simi Valley, CA.9

Recent and Current Exhibitions

As the fiftieth anniversary of Churchill’s death approached in 2015, several exhibitions of Churchill paintings were planned in the United States.

In 2014, the Hallmark Company in Kansas City again highlighted Churchill’s work, albeit with a more modest showing than in 1958. All five of J. C. Hall’s Churchill paintings, together with other items, including letters from Churchill and Eisenhower, were shown at the Hallmark Visitors Center.

In August 2014, The Art of Diplomacy: Winston Churchill and the Pursuit of Painting, opened at Atlanta’s Millennium Gate Museum. The exhibition included the American debut of eighteen paintings from the collection of the late Julian Sandys, Churchill’s first grandchild. The Sandys Family Collection, the largest number of pictures remaining in Churchill family hands, was supplemented by paintings lent from mostly North American collections, including The Tower of Koutoubia Mosque, lent by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

The Tower of Koutoubia Mosque, which sold at auction earlier this year for $11.5 million, was also included in The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill, an exhibition organized by America’s National Churchill Museum at the Mildred CHURCHILL EXHIBITIONS 1 8 | FINEST HOUR ISSUE NO. 194 | 19 Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. The exhibition opened in November 2015. It showcased forty-six works by Churchill and included paintings from the most pre-eminent public and private collections in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—including the Royal Academy of Arts; Churchill College, University of Cambridge; and sixteen paintings from Chartwell. Vanity Fair called the St. Louis exhibition “the most comprehensive collection of Churchill’s paintings ever to be presented.”10

Between 2016 and 2020, America’s National Churchill Museum organized significant showings of Churchill’s paintings throughout the United States. Exhibitions appeared aboard the Queen Mary (Long Beach, CA), at Hillsdale College (Hillsdale, MI), Wofford College (Spartanburg, SC), Society of the Four Arts (Palm Beach, FL), Midland County Library (Midland, TX), and the University of Louisiana Lafayette (Lafayette, LA). Every venue reported record-high attendance, which underscored great public interest in the exceptional creativity of Winston Churchill.

In the United Kingdom, Churchill paintings remain on public view and are a popular attraction at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, and at the Imperial War Museum’s Churchill War Rooms in London, where visitors in ever-growing numbers can experience Churchill’s painterly pursuits.

The largest collection of Churchill paintings in the world remains where many of the canvases were originally created, at Chartwell, the former residence of Winston Churchill now operated by the National Trust. At Chartwell visitors experience finished paintings along with canvases in various states of completion, many unframed in the artist’s studio, which has recently been renovated (see p. 30).

Churchill said, “When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject. But then I shall require a still gayer palette than I get here below. I expect orange and vermilion will be the darkest, dullest colours upon it, and beyond them there will be a whole range of wonderful new colours which will delight the celestial eye.”11 Here in the terrestrial realm, nearly six decades after Churchill’s death, exhibitions of his paintings ensure that new audiences are introduced to and inspired by the art of Winston Churchill. In record numbers, it seems, we too are interested in getting to the bottom of the subject.

Endnotes

1. Miss Gertrude M. Jeans to Sir Gerald Kelley, 23 October 1955, Royal Academy of Arts Archives (RAA).

2. Ibid.

3. WSC to Sir Gerald Kelly, 2 November 1955, RAA.

4. Timothy Riley, “Pictures at an Exhibition: The Making of the 1958 Retrospective of Churchill Paintings, Part II,” The Churchillian, Volume 5, Issue 4, Winter 2014–15, p. 36.

5. Churchill later gave Hall one of his canvases, Frankfurt Beach, Jamaica (1953), as a token of gratitude for employing Churchill’s daughter Sarah, who hosted Hallmark Television Playhouse (later Hallmark Hall of Fame).

6. Winston Churchill the Painter: A Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings by The Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Churchill. Hallmark Cards, Kansas City, 1958.

7. “Art by Winnie Draws Throng,” The Kansas City Times, 23 January 1958.

8. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bulletin, 1959.

9. Merry Alberigi, Finest Hour 85, winter 1994–95.

10. D. Blasberg, “Why Missouri is Hosting a Major Retrospective of Winston Churchill’s Paintings,” Vanity Fair, 11 November 2015.
11. Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime (London: Odhams, 1948).

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.