Painting as a Pastime

Winston S. Churchill

• Publisher: RosettaBooks
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780795329791
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunsttechniken

The first volume in a collection essays and journalism from the legendary politician and Nobel Prize–winning author explores his artistic pursuits. Legendary politician and military strategist Winston S.Churchill was a master not only of the battlefield, but of the page and the podium. Over the course of forty books and countless speeches, broadcasts, news items and more, he addressed a country at war and at peace, thrilling with victory but uneasy with its shifting role on the global stage. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values." During his lifetime, he enthralled readers and brought crowds roaring to their feet; in the years since his death, his skilled writing has inspired generations of eager history buffs. Best known for his political genius and keen eye for military tactics, Churchill was a man of many talents—not the least of which was painting. Throughout his life, Churchill painted to relieve his mind from the demands of leadership and to keep the "black dog" of depression at bay. Included in this volume are Churchill's meditations on painting as a salve for the spirit and an essential creative pursuit. His love for the craft comes to life in this concise yet impassioned work. This volume includes eighteen reprints of Churchill's original work in oil, giving the reader a window into the little-known creative and artistic skill of this prominent figure in twentieth century history.

The first quality that is needed is Audacity. There really is no time for the deliberate approach. Two years of drawing-lessons, three years of copying woodcuts, five years of plaster casts—these are for the young…. We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.

Painting as a Pastime

Winston S. Churchill

Copyright

Painting as a Pastime
First published 1948. © Estate of Winston S. Churchill
Cover art, special contents, and Electronic Edition © 2014 by RosettaBooks LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Image of Winston Churchill painting at the easel at home at Chartwell reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of The Broadwater Collection, an archive of photographs owned by the Churchill family and held at the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.

Cover design by Alexia Garaventa
ISBN ePub edition: 9780795329791

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Publisher’s Preface

Painting as a Pastime

Acknowledgments

Illustrations

Paintings by Winston S. Churchill

A Vase of Flowers

Lakeside Scene, Lake Como

The Tapestries at Blenheim Palace

Olive Grove, La Dragonière

The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell

The Weald of Kent under Snow

The Mill, Saint-Georges-Motel, Normandy

The Mediterranean near Genoa

St. Jean, Cap Ferrat

By Lake Lugano, 1945

Foreword

I am delighted to see this small, but enchanting, book by my father published again, for many people do not fully appreciate the importance of the role painting played in his life.

Winston had already been smitten for about six years by this enthralling—for him—hobby, when he wrote this account of his ‘love affair’ with painting—for indeed, I think that is the only way to describe it—in the two articles he wrote for Strand Magazine in 1921 (which would later in 1948 be published for the first time as Painting as a Pastime). Over forty more years lay ahead of him before he would finally lay aside his brushes and palette in his great old age. ‘Happy are the painters,’ he wrote, ‘for they never shall be lonely: light and colour; peace and hope will keep them company to the end—or almost to the end of the day.’ And these, happily, would prove to be prophetic words for him personally.

Winston found hours of pleasure and occupation in painting—where problems of perspective and colour, light and shade, gave him respite from dark worries, heavy burdens, and the clatter of political strife. And I believe this compelling occupation played a real part in renewing the source of the great inner strength that was his, enabling him to confront storms, ride out depressions, and rise above the rough passages of his political life.

It makes me so happy when, quite often, people tell me that, inspired by my father, they too have started to paint, and found as he did, a different and fulfilling dimension to their lives.

Now once more this new, charming edition will be available to a wide public.

Publisher’s Preface

Three things I never knew about Winston Churchill: he loved to play the card game bezique, he was fond of laying bricks, and he had an absolute passion for painting. He was an accomplished artist, producing around 500 canvases and exhibiting at the British Royal Academy.

But if he came to painting naturally, he didn’t come to it early. Winston Churchill was forty before he picked up a paintbrush and at an ebb in his career. A failed naval attack in the Dardanelles occurred on his watch as First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I, and Churchill was banished to the political backwater post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

It was June of 1915, and in the garden of the Churchills’ English country house, Winston’s sister-in-law was painting. When she saw his interest, Goonie pressed her young son’s paint-box on Winston and urged him to try. Shortly thereafter his friend Hazel Lavery, an accomplished artist, taught him how to address a blank canvas in a marvelous moment that Churchill relays in this book.

For the next five decades, Winston Churchill was seldom without his paints and never without his Muse. Painting relaxed him, consoled him, sustained him, rejuvenated him. He painted on battlefields and on holiday, and often at his estate at Chartwell. World War II brought a hiatus, but even then he managed to paint one canvas when he and Franklin Roosevelt met in North Africa, in January 1943. His writing won the Nobel Prize, but painting won his heart. And who can say what the world owes, indirectly, to the sustenance Churchill took from art.

“Dare to be great: begin,” advised Horace. For Churchill and painting, it was much this way. And once begun, “Audacity is the only ticket,” he said.

A century later, Churchill’s painterly advice still resonates—perhaps more strongly than ever. Such audacity reassures us that it is never too late to open our heart to a passion that has knocked quietly and patiently at our door. Some would call this a second wind; others might see it as a fresh start. I have lately seen this very audacity in my wife, Lori, who took up painting with deft strokes.

Whatever your latent passion, may Painting as a Pastime inspire you to pursue it. May your journey be, as Sir Winston said, like “a joy ride in a paint-box.”

—Steven Leveen

A Vase of Flowers

Painting as a Pastime

Many remedies are suggested for the avoidance of worry and mental overstrain by persons who, over prolonged periods, have to bear exceptional responsibilities and discharge duties upon a very large scale. Some advise exercise, and others, repose. Some counsel travel, and others, retreat. Some praise solitude, and others, gaiety. No doubt all these may play their part according to the individual temperament. But the element which is constant and common in all of them is Change.

Change is the master key. A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it, just in the same way as he can wear out the elbows of his coat. There is, however, this difference between the living cells of the brain and inanimate articles: one cannot mend the frayed elbows of a coat by rubbing the sleeves or shoulders; but the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts. It is not enough merely to switch off the lights which play upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be illuminated. It is no use saying to the tired ‘mental muscles’—if one may coin such an expression—‘I will give you a good rest,’ ‘I will go for a long walk,’ or ‘I will lie down and think of nothing.’ The mind keeps busy just the same. If it has been weighing and measuring, it goes on weighing and measuring. If it has been worrying, it goes on worrying. It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become the lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.

A gifted American psychologist has said, ‘Worry is a spasm of the emotion; the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go.’ It is useless to argue with the mind in this condition. The stronger the will, the more futile the task. One can only gently insinuate something else into its convulsive grasp. And if this something else is rightly chosen, if it is really attended by the illumination of another field of interest, gradually, and often quite swiftly, the old undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation and repair begins.

The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man. But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. The growth of alternative mental interests is a long process. The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall on good ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed.

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say: ‘I will take an interest in this or that.’ Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet hardly get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the week-end.

As for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, who can gratify every caprice and lay their hands on almost every object of desire—for them a new pleasure, a new excitement is only an additional satiation. In vain they rush frantically round from place to place, trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion. For them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path.

Lakeside Scene, Lake Como
September 1945

It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are divided into two classes: first, those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, those whose work and pleasure are one. Of these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. The long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. But Fortune’s favoured children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural harmony. For them the working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. Yet to both classes the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, it may well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.

It may well be that those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.

The most common form of diversion is reading. In that vast and varied field millions find their mental comfort. Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library. ‘A few books,’ which was Lord Morley’s definition of anything under five thousand, may give a sense of comfort and even of complacency. But a day in a library, even of modest dimensions, quickly dispels these illusory sensations. As you browse about, taking down book after book from the shelves and contemplating the vast, infinitely varied store of knowledge and wisdom which the human race has accumulated and preserved, pride, even in its most innocent forms, is chased from the heart by feelings of awe not untinged with sadness. As one surveys the mighty array of sages, saints, historians, scientists, poets and philosophers whose treasures one will never be able to admire—still less enjoy—the brief tenure of our existence here dominates mind and spirit.

Think of all the wonderful tales that have been told, and well told, which you will never know. Think of all the searching inquiries into matters of great consequence which you will never pursue. Think of all the delighting or disturbing ideas that you will never share. Think of the mighty labours which have been accomplished for your service, but of which you will never reap the harvest. But from this melancholy there also comes a calm. The bitter sweets of a pious despair melt into an agreeable sense of compulsory resignation from which we turn with renewed zest to the lighter vanities of life.

‘What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question; and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

It is a mistake to read too many good books when quite young. A man once told me that he had read all the books that mattered. Cross-questioned, he appeared to have read a great many, but they seemed to have made only a slight impression. How many had he understood? How many had entered into his mental composition? How many had been hammered on the anvils of his mind, and afterwards ranged in an armoury of bright weapons ready to hand?

It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. The first impression is the one that counts; and if it is a slight one, it may be all that can be ho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright