“Heather James is thrilled to present this superb selection of paintings by Winston Churchill,” says Heather James Fine Art Co-Founder Jim Carona. “Not only was Churchill one of the greatest statesmen of the modern era, but his personal foray into painting showcased his inner workings with resulting artworks that are technically adept and aesthetically beautiful. These works read like pages out of his diary, mementos of the moments and places that were meaningful to one of the most important men of his day. We at Heather James have had the honor of working closely with Churchill’s family and his oeuvre in the past and consider his works a specialty of ours. It is a joy to be able to share these phenomenal examples.”
Winston Churchill: Making Art, Making History, an exhibition celebrating Churchill and his paintings at Heather James, asks us to contemplate the role of painting in his kaleidoscopic life.
The ten paintings offered by Heather James range from bold landscapes, a vibrant still life, and a quiet interior portrait. It was the Impressionist influence and his own pleasure that most likely made landscapes the genre of choice for Churchill. Painting en plein air was a hallmark for the Impressionists and so too did Churchill haul his paints and canvas outdoors and into nature. Looking at a landscape painting by Churchill is like reading a page of his diary. Given the many demands on his time and his accomplishments both as a politician and as a writer, the quality and productivity of his artistic output is difficult to fathom.
The ten works for sale from this collection include a number of superb examples both of Churchill’s skill as a painter and the interesting stories behind the man and the paintings:
On the Rance Near St. Malo At the Tate Museum’s request, Churchill offered it to them in 1955 for acquisition, along with Loup River, as a “gift to the nation”. Loup River was selected and On the Rance ended up lost in a storeroom at the Tate, where it remained undiscovered for nearly a half century.
The Bay of Eze Painted close to the home of Churchill’s lifelong friend and cousin by marriage, Consuelo Balsan née Vanderbilt, a Gilded Age American socialite.
Oranges and Lemons Churchill painted this work in January 1958 at La Pausa, once the home of Coco Chanel. At the time it was owned by Churchill’s literary agent, Emery Reves, and his wife, Wendy. Ms. Reves later donated a portion of her Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection to the Dallas Museum of Art, including works by Cezanne, who Churchill cited as an inspiration.
View of Loch Choire Churchill painted this in 1919 while staying with his friend, the Duke of Sutherland, at Dunrobin Castle in Scotland, just a few years after he started painting at age 40. He returned to Dunrobin Castle in 1921 to recover shortly after losing his daughter Marigold, aged nearly 4. This was the second devastating death that year, as he also lost his American mother, Jennie Cornwallis-West.
Winston Churchill and his paintings are an area of expertise for Heather James. In 2018, Heather James Fine Art was proud to present an exhibition of ten of Winston Churchill’s paintings.
For nearly 30 years, Heather James Fine Art has expanded into a global network with galleries located in Palm Desert, California, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, along with consultancies in New York City, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montecito, Newport Beach, Palm Beach, Basel in Switzerland, and Lake Como in Italy. Each year, its galleries present an array of museum-quality exhibitions exploring historical and contemporary themes or examining the work of individual influential artists.
Heather James Fine Art is dedicated to bringing exceptional art to private clients and museums globally while providing the utmost personalized logistical, curatorial, and financial services.
For more information about the collection of Winston Churchill paintings and Heather James Fine Art, please contact us at [email protected] or call (760) 346-8926.
For media inquiries or to arrange an interview with Jim Carona about the Churchill exhibition, please contact Scott Busby at The Busby Group at [email protected] or call 310.600.7645.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
