Whatever Mr Churchill does is done thoroughly. Whether he is marshalling armies or Cabinet ministers or words or paint-brushes he combines intelligence, foresight and will power to a degree that makes him impossible to ignore. He knows what he wants to do; he is certain of what he wants to say. What he does is done with energy and what he says is said with clarity. It follows that an essay by Mr Churchill about a hobby of Mr Churchill’s is well worth reading. And when the moral of the essay is, in effect, ‘Go thou and do likewise,’ a great many people, admiring his achievements and bewitched by his persuasiveness, will try to follow in his footsteps; and some of them will be surprised to find themselves stumbling where he walked with ease. This essay was written in 1932 [sic], but it is as appropriate to today’s problems as when it was written. It is a passionately worded plea to the ordinary busy, worried man to take up painting as a hobby, not in order to discover his own latent artistic genius but because he will thereby distract his mind from his normal worries and call into play an entirely different set of ‘mental muscles’. The practice of painting, from this point of view, sounds very much like a kind of therapy. But ‘paint for your mental health’s sake’ is not an adequate summing up of Mr Churchill’s message.
Briefly he describes his problem – the urgent necessity to escape from the absorbing burdens of statesmanship, not by relaxing or retiring from the world but by selecting an entirely different but equally absorbing occupation. Reading is no use: it makes no demands on the creative imagination, nor does it involve the patient in that delightful struggle with a tangible medium that only the arts of painting and carving can supply. Having decided to paint, Mr Churchill plunges in at the deep end (‘Be persuaded that the first quality that is needed is audacity. There really is no time for the deliberate approach’), and drags his reader with him. With delightful naiveté he explains the beginnings, not of intellectual interest but of physical joy. Did I say his qualifications were intelligence, foresight and will power? I should have added ‘a capacity for enthusiasm’. Once he has taken the plunge he becomes a schoolboy. ‘Just to paint is great fun. The colours are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out.’ But he is also a general. ‘One begins to see that painting a picture is like fighting a battle.’
I particularly like ‘One begins to see.’ He has crossed the frontier into unknown country, carrying his immense adventurer’s equipment with him. Even so might a professional Arctic explorer say: ‘One begins to see that Central Africa also has its points of interest.’ The essay proceeds. Military metaphors take charge. ‘The general must not only reconnoitre the battleground: he must also study the achievement of the great captains of the past… Then the galleries of Europe take on a new – and to me, at least, a severely practical – interest.’ By what plan of campaign did Turner win his victories? What were Titian’s tactics? How did Vélasquez dispose of his reserves? Can I adapt Cézanne’s strategy to my own campaign? One can imagine the alert Churchillian mind posing such problems and the restless Churchillian hand trying out the answers on the battlefield of each virgin canvas. And with each little successful skirmish (Mr Churchill is humble enough not to claim for himself a series of major victories) he becomes more enthusiastic, more certain of success and more conscious of what painting has done for him.
This essay, then, is his own little manual of painterly tactics. It is also an expression of gratitude to the hobby that has taught him so much because he was, and still is, willing to learn so much, and because he is, by temperament, capable of learning so much. For that reason it is an admirable introduction to the subject. Its title explains it. It makes no attempt to refer to painting as an expression of man’s immortal soul. It contents itself with asserting that when a man’s life is overburdened and circumscribed by urgent duties and heavy responsibilities, he can shed his burdens and enlarge his horizon – if only he will take the trouble to translate the beauties of the world in which he lives into paint. He will begin to discover beauties he had never suspected and to develop a craftsmanship that can be endlessly perfected. ‘For the first time one begins to envy Methusaleh.’ That sentence includes the whole of the Churchillian self-confidence and the Churchillian humility.
The book contains eighteen colour reproductions of Mr Churchill’s paintings. This brief review of what Mr Churchill has written is not the proper place for an art critic’s estimate of what he has painted. But each one of the plates is a solid proof that every word in the essay is serious. No man who was not in furious earnest could paint as competently as this. Churchill’s subjects range from still life and landscape in Kent to Mediterranean coast scenes and sunlit olive groves in southern France. They are gay and vivid, but they are far more than mere attempts to capture the bright picturesque surface. Painting has taught him to see. ‘The vain racket of the tourist gives place to the calm enjoyment of the philosopher,’ he wisely remarks, and then characteristically adds, ‘intensified by an enthralling sense of action and endeavour.’ How typical that is! Having written the words ‘calm’ and ‘philosopher’ he looks at them with vague unease. The schoolboy and the general in him whisper into his ear ‘action’ and ‘endeavour’. He grins, takes another pull at his cigar, and adds the operative phrase.