The former British prime minister not only wrote Nobel Prize winning works, he also found time to paint. His last oil painting, "The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell," sold for nearly five times more than expected.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sputnik/A. Mcnaughton
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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.
Image: Getty Images
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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Sputnik/A. Mcnaughton
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.
Image: Günther-Grass-Haus
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.
Image: DW/A. Drechsel
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.
Image: DW/A. Drechsel
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.
Image: DW/A. Drechsel
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.
Image: DW/A. Drechsel
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.
Image: DW/A. Drechsel
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The painting by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, entitled "The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell" (1962), fetched 357,000 pounds (€402,000, $473,000) at the London auction house Sotheby's on Tuesday. The work, which had never before been seen in public, had been estimated to fetch a price of 50,000-80,000 pounds.
Another of Churchill's oil paintings also hit the auction bloc as part of Sotheby's sale of modern and post-war British art. "Landscape with two trees" earned a higher price (597,000 pounds), but Sotheby's pointed out that the goldfish painting was remarkable for a number of reasons.
"Unlike many of his landscapes at Chartwell, which focus on a wide panorama of the impressive gardens … the present work is unusual in zooming right into the water itself taking in the luscious foliage along the water side," the auction house said in its description of the dark-hued painting ribboned with warm reds and golds.
Visiting the goldfish pond with his grandchildren was a Sunday ritual for the elderly statesman. He had focused on it as a subject in prior paintings, including in a 1932 work that earned a record-breaking sale sum in 2014.
Influential statesman, Nobel Prize winner — and artist
Churchill (1874-1965), one of Britain's most famous World War-era politicians and winner of the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature, turned to painting when reached the age of 40. Over more than four decades, he created dozens of works which he never sold but gifted to friends, colleagues and foreign dignitaries.
According to the National Churchill Museum, when asked in 1946 whether he would like to exhibit his paintings, Churchill replied with self-deprecation: "They are not worth it. They are only of interest in having been painted by a notorious character!"
In 2014, another of Churchill's paintings featuring the goldfish pool at Chartwell was auctioned off. He painted this one in 1932.Image: Reuters/P. Nicholls
The bodyguard behind the 1962 goldfish pond
Churchill created many of his paintings, including "The Goldfish Pond at Chartwell," at his countryside mansion in Kent, a region in southeast England.
The fact that "The Goldfish Pond," painted three years before Churchill died, even exists is thanks to his bodyguard Sergeant Edmund Murray. Murray served the politician in the last 15 years of his life, often setting up the amateur artist's paintbrushes and easels. The bodyguard encouraged Churchill to undertake one final work.
Churchill gifted the painting to Murray upon its completion.
