Winston Churchill: The Painter

When Winston Churchill is brought back into view, it is usually as war leader, orator, bulldog spirit of defiance. Much less often is he considered as a painter, which is precisely what makes Winston Churchill: The Painter such an intriguing proposition. Opening at the Wallace Collection this May, the exhibition is billed as the first substantial UK show devoted to his art since his death, bringing together more than 50 works, many from private collections rarely seen in public.

That alone gives the exhibition a certain charge. Churchill’s painting has long hovered at the edge of his public story, treated as an appealing footnote rather than a serious part of his inner life. Yet he produced more than 500 canvases over five decades, beginning in 1915, when painting became both consolation and discipline after the Dardanelles disaster. The Wallace Collection’s chronological approach promises to show not a hobbyist dabbler, but a man who kept returning to the canvas with persistence, appetite and, eventually, confidence.

What emerges from the exhibition materials is not the image of a great hidden master, which would be a silly claim, but something more compelling: Churchill as an intelligent, committed amateur whose paintings reveal a side of him politics could never hold. The range sounds impressive. There are wartime scenes, still lifes, views of Chartwell, harbours in the South of France and Italy, and the Moroccan landscapes that became the high point of his painterly maturity. The studio at Chartwell, now under the care of the National Trust, still holds the largest collection of his paintings, which helps explain why works from his home loom large in this show.

Left: Sir Winston Churchill, The Beach at Walmer C316 (1938) America’s National Churchill Museum at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.
Right: Sir Winston Churchill, The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell C344 (1932). Private Collection. Photo: Matthew Hollow.
Both images © Churchill Heritage Ltd.

The Morocco pictures are likely to be among the main attractions. Churchill made six visits to Marrakech between 1935 and 1959, drawn to its light, colour and the theatrical contrast between foliage, plain and mountain. The most famous result was The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, painted after the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, when Churchill persuaded Franklin D Roosevelt to join him in Marrakech. It was, as the exhibition notes, the only painting Churchill made during the Second World War.

There is also a pleasing sub-plot in the Royal Academy story. Encouraged by Sir Alfred Munnings, Churchill submitted works to the Summer Exhibition in 1947 under the pseudonym David Winter. When his identity emerged, the novelty was irresistible, but so too was the broader point: he wanted the work judged before the name. He was elected Honorary Academician Extraordinary the following year, a distinction that confirmed painting as something more than private therapy or aristocratic pastime.

The real interest of this exhibition, though, lies not in whether Churchill can be ranked among major British painters. He cannot. It lies in what painting offered him: silence, control, pleasure, concentration. The Wallace Collection describes a figure defined by politics but sustained by art, and that feels exactly right.

For all Churchill’s monumentality in public life, painting seems to have returned him to something more human: a man standing before a canvas, looking for balance, light and calm. That may be the most revealing portrait of all.

Winston Churchill: The Painter
The Wallace Collection
23 May – 29 November 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.

Author: Lina Ress

Lead image: Sir Winston Churchill painting in Belgium, September 1946 (c) Churchill Archives Centre, CSCT 5-6-160.