Sir Winston Churchill, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., HON. R.A.

The Artist, by whom gifted to Carl and Cecil Montag, and thence by descent to their daughter Claire Montag
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2000

Please note the colours are more vibrant than the catalogue illustration suggests. Original canvas. There are artist's pin holes in each corner. There is an area of fine paint separation by the centre left edge and other small areas to the green trees in the centre of the composition. There is an area of fine surface craquelure to the sky in the upper left corner, and a small protrusion with a fine line of corresponding paint loss in the sky above the trees. The surface is slightly dirty otherwise in good overall condition with strong passages of impasto. Under UV light there are no signs of retouching. Held in a gilt plaster frame. Please contact the department on 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions about the present work.
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The present work is to be sold with a letter written by Sir Winston Churchill, dated 1945.

The warm Mediterranean light of Cassis, located in the south of France, greatly appealed to Churchill's painterly instincts. With its scintillating colour and dappled brushstrokes, the present work clearly demonstrates the influence of the Impressionists and the lessons Churchill had learnt from what he called 'the modern French School... [the] disciples of Cézanne. [These artists] view Nature as a mass of shimmering light in which forms and surfaces are comparatively unimportant, indeed hardly visible, but which [gleam] and [glow] with beautiful harmonies and contrasts of colour' (David Coombs and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill's Life through his Paintings, Chaucer Press, London, 2003, p.71). Les Calanques refers to the rocky inlets that characterise the coastline near Cassis and its depiction in the present work relates it closely to several of Churchill's paintings of coastal scenes near Marseilles (see David Coombs, op.cit., pp.78-79).

Churchill's ventures to the south of France were welcome breaks, providing the perfect respite from the pressures of political life. This sense of freedom is evoked in the present work through Churchill's vibrant depiction of the scene, rendered with energetic and confident brushwork. The cliffs are bathed in warm sunlight and in the foreground a boat rests peacefully upon the expanse of water. Churchill purposefully adopts a viewpoint that allows him to emphasise not only a feeling of being among the cliffs but also to play upon the effects of light and colour across the water. As an anonymous art critic in The Times commented in response to Churchill's exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1959: 'Water, indeed, seems to fascinate him, not only for the Impressionist painter's beano that can be had with broken reflections but also for the far more exacting tonal exercise - that which engaged the ageing Monet to the exclusion of all else - set by a surface which is partly transparent.' (reprinted in David Coombs, op.cit., p.209)

Churchill first took to painting in 1915 after his enforced resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty left him profoundly depressed. Renting Hoe Farm near Godalming in Surrey that summer, Churchill one day passed by his sister-in-law Lady Gwendeline sketching the garden in watercolours. He asked to borrow a brush and so started a passion for painting that never left him. He received encouragement from Sir John Lavery who lived near the Churchill's residence in South Kensington. Churchill often worked in his studio, and Lavery said of him: 'I know few amateur wielders of the brush with a keener sense of light and colour, or a surer grasp of the essentials' (see David Coombs, op. cit., p.26).

It was also in 1915 that Churchill met and befriended Carl Montag in Paris. Montag was a landscape painter of Swiss origin who took Churchill around the galleries of Paris and introduced him to the work of the Impressionists. Their paintings had a profound impact, and a bold palette was to be a staple of Churchill's work from then onwards. In his article Painting as a Pastime, first published in The Strand Magazine in 1921/22, Churchill proclaimed: 'I must say I like bright colours...I rejoice with brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor brown ones.'  In January 1921 the pair decided to test the appeal of Churchill's paintings on French clients and organized an exhibition at the Galerie Druet in Paris under the pseudonym Charles Morin. The present work was offered as gift to Montag following this show. Churchill and Montag remained close until the latter's death in 1956, and enjoyed many painting expeditions together, including to Cassis in 1922 and 1924. Legend has it that Churchill's nickname -The Bulldog- was in effect Montag's doing. He gave Churchill a small painting of a 'bouledogue' by Camille Bombois, which he deemed an accurate portrait of his friend.

 

Its existence largely unknown until its recent emergence, Les Calanques à Cassis is a significant rediscovery and is to be included in the on-going official catalogue of Sir Winston Churchill's paintings, which is being compiled by David Coombs, with the unique number C 540.