Most of this book consists of Winston Churchill’s own thoughts on art, and the views of contemporary critics on him as an artist. These writings have never previously been gathered together, and that in itself is ample justification for the appearance of this volume. They tell us important things about Churchill, and about his reputation in his time; and while his own writings on art are, like most of his pictures, consistently buoyant, joyous and highly-coloured, he painted primarily to keep depression at bay, and also because it provided another outlet for the display of his extraordinarily creative gifts. Statesmen who are also artists are very rare, and Churchill is by a substantial margin the best documented of them.
Although I have long been fascinated by Churchill as one of the great historical figures of the twentieth century, my interest in him as a painter was only aroused when I was invited to deliver the Linbury Lecture at Dulwich Art Gallery on that subject, and it was further stimulated when I recorded a series that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 entitled ‘Churchill’s Other Lives’. Accordingly, my first thanks are to Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover and the Trustees of the Linbury Trust, and to Dr Ian Dejardin, the then Director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, for inviting me to lecture on Churchill as an artist; and to Denys Blakeway and Melissa Fitzgerald, of Blakeway Productions, with whom I made ‘Churchill’s Other Lives’.
In researching Churchill the painter in the archives, I am once more indebted to Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archive Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, and his unfailingly knowledgeable and helpful colleagues. I am grateful to Dr Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy, and to Mark Pomeroy, the Academy’s Archivist, for their assistance and advice. I also thank Bart H. Ryckbosch, the Glasser and Rosenthal Family Archivist at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Teri Edelstein for putting us in touch. Once more, the assistance and forbearance of Dr Martha Vandrei have been invaluable.
In working on this project, I have been enormously fortunate in my two editors at Bloomsbury, Robin Baird-Smith and Jamie Birkett, who have seen a complex book through to publication with great resourcefulness, dedication and skill, and I also express my thanks to their colleagues, Sutchinda Thompson, Graham Coster, Hannah Paget and Chloe Foster. I am grateful to Curtis Brown, who represent the Churchill Estate, and in particular to Gordon Wise, to the National Trust staff who work at Chartwell, and to Mr Randolph Churchill for his generous help and encouragement. Thanks to them, no less than to Churchill himself, this book reveals his life in art more vividly than ever before.