March 24, 2017

In 1915, during the First World War, Churchill helped orchestrate the disastrous Dardanelles naval campaign and the related military landings on Gallipoli, both of which saw enormous losses of life. As a result, Churchill found himself publicly and politically discredited. He was demoted to the token post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. It seemed his political career was at an end. Devastated and despairing, Churchill retreated to a rented house, Hoe Farm, near Godalming, Surrey, with Clementine and the children.

One day in June, his sister-in-law, Gwendoline (or ‘Goonie’), was painting in the garden and, seeing Churchill’s interest, suggested he try it himself. She loaned him her young son’s paint-box. So began one of his life’s passions. Churchill took to painting, at the age of forty, with his customary gusto, seeing it as his salvation from despair – ‘the Muse of Painting came to my rescue’. He continued to paint for the next forty years.

‘Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it … And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue — out of charity and out of chivalry … — and said, “Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people.”’
Churchill, Painting as a Pastime