The present work is a scale model of the monumental and imposing sculpture of Britain's greatest statesman, Sir Winston Churchill, which currently resides in the Member’s Lobby in the Houses of Parliament. The two main doors of the Lobby are winged by sculptures of four British prime ministers, Clement Atlee and Margaret Thatcher and outside what is now called the Churchill Arch, are the ministers who led Britain through each of the World Wars, Churchill and David Lloyd George. The arch was significantly damaged during the Second World War, and when it was rebuilt Churchill instructed that it retain some of the bomb damaged stones, as a testament to the conflict. It is perhaps no surprise then that when Oscar Nemon was chosen to produce a portrait of Churchill to stand alongside Uli Nimptsch’s study of David Lloyd George, he chose to depict the great man with his hand on his hips, assessing the damage as he strode through London’s Blitz torn landscape.

By the time Nemon was chosen for the commission in 1970, he was a successful and highly sought after portrait artist, who had produced sculptures of some of the leading cultural figures of the day, and who had known Churchill personally when he was alive. Born in Osijek, Yugoslavia, to a tight knit Jewish family, Nemon was drawn to the arts from an early age, firstly focusing on painting and drawing before being inspired by the age of 14 to pursue sculpture. He began exhibiting while at secondary school, before moving to Vienna where he worked at his uncle’s bronze foundry and met Sigmund Freud, whom he would eventually sculpt in 1931 and again in 1936. In 1925, he moved to Brussels where he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, where he was awarded the Gold Medal Prize for sculpture, and would go on to become an associate of René Magritte.

The style Nemon developed prior to the War was one of immediacy and intimacy, in part due to his method of modeling from life in clay, before later casting in bronze or carving in marble. The interaction with the sitter, his ability to converse with the subject and draw them out of their shell, meant the works he produced were highly personal, and conveyed a sense of the sitter’s internal world, as opposed to a straightforward likeness. As Nemon commented:

This ability to capture a sitter, and his easy rapport with even the most noteworthy of subjects, meant he quickly became a celebrated portraitist of some demand, and early in his career received notable commissions for portraits of King Albert I, and Queen Astrid of the Belgians, politician Emile Vandervelde Henri Spaak and writer August Vermeylen.

In 1938, due to the increasingly oppressive stance of the Nazis, Nemon fled to England, leaving behind his studio and nearly all of his work to date. Nemon lost the majority of his family in the Holocaust, and this certainly played a part in the admiration Nemon felt for Churchill. Having admired the statesman from afar, Nemon first had the opportunity to meet Churchill in Marrakech in 1951. Nemon had been invited by French psychoanalyst René Laforgue and his wife to join them at the La Mamounia Hotel. Laforgue was in fact was aware of both Nemon’s admiration for the great statesman and the fact that the Churchill’s would also be in attendance. At breakfast one morning, Nemon was seated near the Churchills and began to make mental observations of Churchill’s countenance. He then hurriedly returned to his room to produce a small bust. Later Nemon ran into Churchill’s cousin Sylvia Henley, whom he had met during the war, and he mentioned his portrait. She convinced him to show it to Churchill’s wife Clemintine, who was immediately impressed and sent him a note stating:

Nemon gifted the bust to the Churchills, and the couple agreed to Winston sitting more formally for Nemon at a later date, thus beginning a fruitful collaboration. Nemon would go on to produce several portraits of Winston, firstly capturing the great statesman as he was painting in Marrakesh. Other notable commissions included one from Queen Elizabeth II, who wanted a portrait of her first prime minister to be placed in Windsor, and the Guildhall in 1954, which Churchill was very happy with:

Nemon recalls that Churchill was not a sanguine sitter, and he would be often filled with trepidation before their encounters, noting Chuchill could be 'bellicose, challenging and deliberately provocative. ‘ However, as fellow artists there was an underlying respect and understanding of one another, in fact during one of the sittings Churchill decided to sculpt a portrait of Nemon, resulting in the only known sculpture he ever produced, which now resides in his studio at Chartwell. While Churchill was a very harsh critic of his own work, Nemon was encouraging, writing:

Nemon’s bronzes of Winston Churchill can now be found at Chartwell, Churchill College Cambridge, Bletchley Park, Windsor Palace, the Guildhall, as well as in international collections in Mexico City, Quebec, Brussels, Paris, Moscow, Toronto, Jerusalem, and Kansas City amongst others. Other notable subjects sculpted by Nemon include Field Marshal Montgomery, Margaret Thatcher, Lord Beaverbrook, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Harold Macmillan, General Eisnhower, and President Truman. His portraits of the Royal family include Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother, Prince Philip, Princess Diana, and Queen Elizabeth II, who granted him a studio in St James.

The present work was offered for sale by The Wylma Wayne Gallery, London, and Nemon was the only sculptor featured in the Gallery's June - July 1982 exhibition, which showcased an outstanding range of Churchill's paintings. The work was purchased in 1985 by US based collectors Benjamin and Mary Rummerfield, a treasured compliment to their collection of Churchill paintings, which was one of the largest collections of Churchill paintings outside of the Churchill family and Churchill's former home of Chartwell.