Monet Painting Lifted Churchill’s Spirits in Postwar Years

Finding oneself in opposition within the House of Commons can be particularly uncomfortable for individuals once at the helm of national leadership, especially for someone also credited with a crucial military victory. This was the reality for Winston Churchill in 1949.

At that time, he was consoled with an extraordinary gift—a French impressionist masterpiece: Claude Monet’s depiction of the Palace of Westminster, enveloped in thick mists.

This generous gift, now valued at several million pounds, came with a note wishing that “the fog that shrouds Westminster,” then under the control of Clement Attlee’s Labour party, would soon lift.

The hazy portrayal of Westminster’s facade, completed in 1902 and situated by the River Thames, is set to be one of the highlights of a landmark exhibition, Monet and London. This exhibition will reunite many of the impressionist’s most celebrated images of London for the first time in 120 years. Churchill’s painting is one of only two Monets in British ownership featured in the show at the Courtauld gallery on the Strand next month. The piece has been newly restored for display with a layer of yellowing varnish removed.

“Churchill’s love for Monet began in the 1930s when he first started studying painting himself, under the tutelage of portraitist John Singer Sargent, who had also painted Churchill’s mother,” said Katherine Carter, curator at Chartwell, Churchill’s former home in Kent. “Sargent had advised Churchill to start by copying other great artists to understand their techniques. Churchill found immense joy in recreating the styles of Monet and other impressionists, once describing the process as ‘a joyride in a paintbox.’”

This particular London painting, now owned by The National Trust as caretakers of Chartwell, was gifted to Churchill by literary agent Emery Reves. Reves, aware of Churchill’s admiration for Monet, presented it as “a very small token of my gratitude for your friendship.”

It was painted during Monet’s final visit to London and is believed to have been described in a diary entry from February 1900. The entry details a day when Monet wrote of “an extraordinary fog, completely yellow; I think I did not too bad an impression of it; it’s always beautiful.”

Reves spent considerable time finding a worthy painting to offer as a combined Christmas and 75th birthday gift for Churchill. In a letter, now held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, Reves documents his efforts in search of the proper piece.

A painting he found in Paris portrayed a similar view, but he eventually found its equivalent at an exhibition of French landscapes at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. “In the Academy, the picture looks good, although it is much more sketchy and not as well painted as the one I found in France,” wrote Reves. Despite these observations, Reves consulted John Rothenstein from the Tate Gallery, who called it a “masterpiece” and assured Reves that he would be delighted to hang it at the Tate. Convinced, Reves arranged for the painting to be delivered that morning.

Churchill did not relish his post-1945 exit from governance and rarely attended the House of Commons, leaving much of the Conservative party’s management to others while maintaining international diplomatic status. However, his passion for painting, both as a hobby and as a connoisseur, provided a sustaining pleasure throughout his years in power. “Churchill had written about the pleasure art gave him as far back as 1921 and 1922 in his articles on Painting as a Pastime for Strand magazine,” said Carter. “During the darker days of the Second World War, he even remarked that ‘the muse of painting came to my rescue.’”

Monet’s view upstream towards Westminster is one of several versions of the scene he painted from The Savoy Hotel. His window overlooked Waterloo Bridge and extended to Charing Cross and beyond. This view closely resembles the river view from the Courtauld Gallery’s home in nearby Somerset House.

Monet first visited London in his early 30s. However, it wasn’t until nearly three decades later that he pursued his desire to capture the effects of fog on the Thames. Often working on multiple canvases simultaneously, he aimed to seize the changing impacts of light and color within the damp, smoky cityscape. “I so love London!” he once exclaimed to renowned art dealer René Gimpel, adding, “without the fog, London wouldn’t be a beautiful city. It’s the fog that gives it magnificent breadth. Those massive regular blocks become grandiose within that mysterious cloak.”

Source: The Guardian