The unknown side of Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill wasn't only Great Britain's prime minister but also a writer and artist. His paintings, spanning forty years, have been auctioned at Sotheby's and exhibited at the Günter Grass House in Germany.
Churchill's last work in oil
Winston Churchill turned to painting around 1914 but by 1962 he had all but stopped. Churchill's bodyguard Edmund Murray encouraged the aging statesman to take up his paintbrushes one last time. As a subject, Churchill chose his estates goldfish pond, where he spent Sundays with his grandkids. He gifted the work to Murray. "The Goldfish Pond at Chartwell" earned 357,000 GBP at a Sotheby's auction.
Politician, painter, writer
British politician Winston Churchill (1874-1965) likely rarely suffered from boredom. When he wasn't painting in his free time, he was writing books about politics or history. In 1953, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Churchill is pictured here in 1956.
Churchill's art in Germany for the first time
"Winston Churchill. Writings. Speeches. Pictures" was the succint title of the exhibition in the Günter Grass House in Lübeck in northern Germany. From late 2016 through early 2017, the museum displayed 11 of Churchill's paintings. The show reveals the lesser known sides of the former British prime minister and amateur painter.
Inspiration in his own garden
Churchill kept a number of animals on his property in Chartwell, located south of London in the English county of Kent. Among them were black swans, which he particularly admired. They were his inspiration for this oil painting.
Vacations in southern France
Churchill bought his paints from a Swiss paint maker named Willy Sax. The two men became friends and traveled together to southern France. But Churchill's painting of a bridge in Aix-en-Provence wasn't created in France. Instead, the statesman painted it in his studio, based on a photo taken by Sax.
Ruins as a symbol for a destroyed Europe
This painting of temple ruins was probably created in 1934. In 1956, Churchill gave it to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — Germany's first leader after World War II. It recalls the destruction in Europe and the spirit of the antiquity, says Jörg-Philipp Thomsa, the director of the Günter Grass House.
The words of a Nobel Prize winner
Along with 11 paintings, the Lübeck exhibition is also displaying numerous writings and speeches by the former British prime minister. Churchill was the author of over a dozen books. His speeches still evoke emotion and his thoughts about Europe couldn't be more relevant today.