Winston Churchill the Painter: The Wallace Collection Exhibition Refra

Explore Winston Churchill’s legacy as a painter through the Wallace Collection’s landmark exhibition, featuring important works previously handled by M.S. Rau.

Churchill Bronze Bust by Vivien Mallock. M.S. Rau.

Churchill’s World on Canvas

Sir Winston Churchill is remembered first as one of the most important people of the 20th century: Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, a Nobel Prize-winning writer, an orator of rare force and a Member of Parliament for more than six decades. Yet beyond the public life of speeches, strategy and statecraft, Churchill cultivated another identity with remarkable devotion. He was a painter.

This lesser-known side of Churchill is now receiving major institutional attention with Winston Churchill: The Painter, on view at the Wallace Collection in London from May 23 through November 29, 2026. The exhibition marks the first major retrospective of Churchill’s paintings since his death in 1965, bringing together more than 50 works that trace the evolution of his artistic practice across five decades.

More than half of the paintings come from private collections, making this a rare opportunity to study works seldom accessible to the public. Recent attention from The New York Times underscores the importance of the statesman as a serious artist.

Churchill’s Discovery of Painting

Churchill began painting in 1915, at one of the most difficult moments of his career. Following the disastrous Gallipoli campaign during the First World War, he was removed from his powerful post as First Lord of the Admiralty and entered a period of profound personal and political uncertainty. It was then that painting entered his life.

What began as a form of respite quickly became a lifelong pursuit. Churchill painted landscapes, gardens, seascapes, city views, interiors and still lifes. He worked primarily in oil, embracing color with a confidence that reflected his admiration for 19th-century French painting, especially Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. His subjects were often places of personal significance: Chartwell, his beloved country home in Kent; the French Riviera; the Mediterranean; Morocco; and the historic landscapes he encountered during diplomatic travels.

Churchill himself wrote eloquently about the consolations of painting in his essay Painting as a Pastime. “Happy are the painters,” he observed, “for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end.” That statement captures the emotional role painting played in his life. For Churchill, the canvas offered focus, freedom and quietude amid the immense pressures of public duty.

A Major Reassessment at the Wallace Collection

During his lifetime, some of Churchill’s works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, while others were given as personal gifts or diplomatic tokens. Yet he never pursued painting as a professional career. This has sometimes led critics to dismiss Churchill’s work too quickly as the output of a famous amateur.

The Wallace Collection challenges that easy categorization. By assembling more than 50 paintings in a chronological and thematic presentation, the exhibition invites viewers to consider Churchill’s development as an artist: his eye for atmosphere, his use of radiant color, his attraction to light-filled landscapes and his ability to record moments of historical and personal significance.

The result is a more nuanced portrait of Churchill. These works do not ask us to set aside his political legacy. Rather, they allow us to see another dimension of it. Churchill’s paintings reveal the private discipline of a man whose public life was defined by conflict, responsibility and consequence. They show joy, vulnerability, resilience and the sustained search for beauty.

Record-Breaking Work

The exhibition includes several works previously handled by M.S. Rau, including The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, which is widely regarded as Churchill’s most important painting. Created in 1943 following the Casablanca Conference, it is the only painting Churchill completed during the Second World War. After the conference, Churchill invited President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Marrakesh, eager to show him the sunset over the Atlas Mountains. The two leaders viewed the scene together, and Churchill later painted the image as a gift for Roosevelt. The painting later achieved the highest auction price for a Churchill painting in 2021.