Winston Churchill: The Painter review – We will daub them on the beaches

Wallace Collection, London Intended to relieve the stresses of office, especially during wartime, Churchill’s amateurish works have an overpowering joy – but his donkeys would make Lowry blush Winston Churchill, British prime minister during the second world war and again in the 1950s, was firstly a politician and statesman, but secondly a painter. He was not an artist though. He described his paintings as “daubs”: they are the amateur output of a Sunday painter, more about mild stress relief than technically efficient vehicles intended for iconographic messages. There is an innocent charm in Churchill’s declaration that “the simplest objects have their beauty” – and in his encouraging others to paint too, without seeking fame or recognition. He exhibited modestly, and anonymously, in minor salons in the 1920s. Squinting (very) hard just about reveals the colourist efforts of perhaps a very minor impressionist-leaning painter, to be charitable, though any relation to the existing art historical canon is irrelevant: the works are of interest because of the identity of their creator, and as primary historical sources. They record where he was, when, and what he saw: v