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

The Artist and thence by descent to his daughter Mary

David Coombs, Churchill: His Paintings, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1967, cat. no.292, illustrated p.191;  
David Coombs and Minnie S. Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill's Life through his Paintings, Chaucer Press, London, 2003, cat. no.C292, illustrated p.89;
David Coombs and Minnie S. Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill His Life and His Paintings, Lyme Regis, 2011, cat. no.C292, illustrated p.89.

Original canvas. There are pinholes in the corners of the canvas which appear to be consistent with the artist's working method. On extremely close examination it is possible to see some fine vertical lines of cracking in the paint surface of the sky. With the exception of this, the work appears to be in good condition. Ultraviolet light reveals a horizontal area of florescence along the shore line, some very small spots of florescence in each of the four corns of the canvas, consistent with retouching of the pinholes. There is another small area of florescence, measuring approximately 5mm by 10mm, in the green pigments at the lower left of the composition. This retouching is very minor and has been sensitively executed. The painting is presented in a gilded frame with a beaded moulding along the inside edge. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to David Coombs for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

Winston and Clementine were frequent visitors to Sir Philip Sasoon’s house at Port Lympne, on the Kent Coast, using these holidays as necessary respites from the stress of political life, but also as an opportunity to focus on writing his war memoirs and to paint.  Upon one of his visits the notable author Princess Marthe Bibesco, who was also a frequent guest at Lympne, came upon Churchill painting ‘in the first rays of the spring sun[. He]was surrounded by paint boxes, cloths stained with all the colours of the rainbow and paint brushes set in pots… He was completely absorbed… wearing his immense [faded and frayed] sombrero of light felt…painting that great expanse of marshland, spread out below the cliffs of Folkstone…[where] according to the legend… Julius Caesar had landed… Four sketches were drying in the sun, propped up against the feet of the easel. He was now slashing the fifth canvas, almost throwing paint on; he was sighing, almost out of breath with the effort of expressing his feelings’ (Marthe Bibesco, quoted in Coombs and Churchill, 2003, op.cit., p.126). Churchill depicted several scenes of Port Lympne and the surrounding countryside, including The Library at Lympne (C19, Private Collection) and The Blue Room at Lympne (C189, The National Trust, Chartwell).  

A descendent of the Rothschilds through his mother’s side, Sassoon was a prominent social entertainer, politician, and an important patron and collector of the arts. A chairman of the Trustees of the National Gallery, Sassoon encouraged Churchill in his art related interests, loaning him various works from his collection to copy, including several by the American painter John Singer Sargent. Churchill was amongst a group of notable figures of the day who were welcomed to the Lympne retreat, including Charlie Chaplin, David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, T. E. Lawrence, the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson, Lord Louis Mountbatten, and Giles Lytton Strachey. The environment was one of warmth and welcome, and one that encouraged intellectual debate over cups of tea, as society notables crossed paths with the several artists such as Glyn Philpot, Jose Maria Sert, and Rex Whistler, who was commissioned to paint a series of murals in the home.  

In the present work, Churchill captures the incredible landscape of the Romney marshes, a viewpoint which inspired Sassoon to build the house on that very spot. The house itself was designed by Herbert Baker in 1912, and in 1918 Philip Tilden began work on the extensive Italian style gardens. Sassoon was so impressed and pleased by Tilden’s work that he recommended the architect to Churchill, who in turn commissioned him to modernise and expand the family home in Chartwell.