{"id":721993,"date":"2026-08-01T01:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T01:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/721993\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T01:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T01:54:11","slug":"see-winston-churchills-paintings-and-understand-the-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/721993\/","title":{"rendered":"See Winston Churchill\u2019s paintings and understand the man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hitler was a painter<\/a> too. Indeed, it was as a would-be professional painter that he was rejected by the Vienna Academy \u2013 a decision which, though entirely justified, turned out to have catastrophic consequences. The embittered young Adolf became the vengeful and murderous F\u00fchrer. I have often wished someone would put on a joint retrospective of his and Churchill\u2019s work. It would show greatly to Churchill\u2019s advantage. Hitler\u2019s stiff, usually architectural efforts are deadly; Churchill\u2019s works are full of life.<\/p>\n

It speaks well of anyone that he or she can enjoy a pastime and communicate that enjoyment. In the case of Churchill, one cannot understand his achievements<\/a> in every field without recognising that enjoyment played a part in all of them \u2013 as reporter, author, soldier and statesman. Even when the hour was very dark, his zest for life never left him. \u201cI must say I like bright colours,\u201d he wrote. For him, that was true both literally and metaphorically.<\/p>\n

I like to think that if things had been the other way round and he had been a professional painter and only a part-time MP (as was possible in those days), Churchill could have written an equally brilliant essay called Politics as a Pastime. It was not that he was a dilettante \u2013 almost no one was ever more industrious \u2013 but that the pleasure principle was always at work.<\/p>\n

For Churchill, it all began in 1915 when, because of clashes over his Gallipoli scheme, he was removed from the Admiralty but stayed in the Cabinet. He was \u201cplaced cruelly in the front seat\u201d, as he put it. \u201cI knew everything and could do nothing.\u201d Painting, specifically painting in oils \u2013 \u201ca medium\u2026which offers real power\u201d and permits \u201cAudacity\u201d (he used the capital A for this beloved concept) \u2013 was his escape.<\/p>\n

Not much later, saddened by everything that had gone wrong, he temporarily left Parliament and politics to serve as an officer at the Western front. There, morose among the explosions, he painted; when he had painted, he cheered up. He compared painting to fighting a battle, because of the need for \u201ca good plan\u201d. Three of the exhibition\u2019s nearly 60 pictures are of Flanders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hitler was a painter too. Indeed, it was as a would-be professional painter that he was rejected by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,155739,5337,1120,96,50,6884,121617,31313,56,54,55,169184],"class_list":["post-721993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-charles-moore","tag-comment","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-paintings","tag-second-world-war","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-winston-churchill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}