A work of art on Churchill’s art

This beautiful book combines Churchill’s favorite French painting venues with fastidious research on their locations. The horizontal format blends quality binding with brilliant color on thick, coated paper, and the price is a bargain. Paul Rafferty, himself an artist, brings Churchill’s oils alive as adjuncts to WSC’s personality. (N.B.: this writer played a minor part in verifying quotations.)

The book’s forte is its “then and now” juxtaposition of Churchill’s art with photos of the precise venues. Again and again, the eye feasts on double-page spreads nearly two feet wide, showing a Churchill painting alongside the very spot today. Finding those spots often required exhaustive research and exploration.

Sometimes, Rafferty relied on photos Churchill had snapped to allow him to finish a portrait back at his studio. Familiarity with the area helped locate many spots. Occasionally a passerby would know where Sir Winston painted. But more often, it required Sherlockian sleuthing, sometimes resulting in bizarre adventures.

In search of the “Red Rocks”

Rafferty carried 100 laminated cards of elusive paintings to help him “reacquire” Churchill’s targets. Among the elusive was “Red Rocks, L’Esterel.” There the whole coastline is red rocks! With two artist friends he drove along, vainly searching. Finally they stopped at one last lay-by. There they were! Paul and his friends decided this was one scene they would try their hands at painting themselves:

Venturing down to see if access was possible, we came upon a nudist beach, much to our—and their—surprise…. We climbed over the cliff and down into the empty cove, with only piles of driftwood lying around. We began painting and after an hour or so I looked up to see a naked woman on top of the ridge we had just climbed over. She waved, probably wondering what we were doing: I waved back, certainly wondering what she was doing. I returned to my painting and suggested to the others, “You don’t see that, painting in Trafalgar Square.”

Mentors and paraphernalia

The depth of research is not confined to venues. Rafferty devotes pages to Riviera artist mentors, like Sir William Nicholson, John and Hazel Lavery and Alfred Munnings. Other pages illustrate his equipment, including his traveling easels, brushes, paintboxes and oils, even his Stetson hat.

Most of Churchill’s oil paints came from his “colourman” Willy Sax. Having tried Sax’s oils, WSC became devoted. In his famous essay, Painting as a Pastime, he compared oil painting to a military campaign:

You have a medium at your disposal which offers real power, if you only can find out how to use it…. You need not build downwards awkwardly from white paper to your darkest dark…. strike where you please, beginning if you will with a moderate central arrangement of middle tones, and then hurling in the extremes when the psychological moment comes. Lastly, the pigment itself is such nice stuff to handle (if it does not retaliate).

In one of his letters to Sax he asks for “six tubes garance (Rose Madder), Rose Dorée or Pink Madder, two tubes Neutral Tint, four tubes Pale Violet Cobalt.” This reminds us of his dialogue with Field Marshal Alexander, painting together at Lake Como. “I always use just a touch of Rose Madder; do you use Rose Madder, Winston?” “But of course, Alex, I always use Rose Madder.”

Rafferty on the Churchill trail

A double page spread (right) offers a map showing the amazing breadth of the Riviera places Churchill painted. Some are familiar: Three favorites were Roquebrune-Cap-Martin: “La Pausa” (Emery and Wendy Reves) “Les Zoraïdes” (Daisy Fellowes) and “La Dragonnière” (Lord Rothermere). Then there were Lord Beaverbrook’s “La Capponcina” at Cap d’Ail, and Maxine Elliott’s Chȃteau de l’Horizon, in Golfe-Juan.

Rafferty also tracked the more obscure places, such as Consuelo Balsan’s villa near Eze, and Ralph Curtis’s “Villa Sylvia” at St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Churchill painted churches and chapels, like St.-Paul-de-Vence, and loved water scenes. The River Loup in the Alps Maritimes whetted his passion for depicting water. He loved and painted certain preferred restaurants, like Restaurant Philip at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in Provence. Its proprietor, aged 92, still remembers him: a gourmet who would order from the menu. He particularly fancied the trout that abounded in the cold river—which again excited his artists’s eye.

The work continues

Satiated with this vivid display of artistry and erudition, the reader is disappointed to get to the end. No worries. Just flip the book over and start again. There is so much detail, so many amazing comparisons of then and now, that it always seems fresh and new. Even trivia, such as Churchill’s motorcars (a sideline of this writer) gets some attention.

I’d never seen a photo of his 1956 Humber Hawk estate car, presented by his friend Lord Rootes. Churchill was rumored to have used it to haul his painting gear on the Riviera. Sure enough, Rafferty shows him seated in the Hawk, arriving at Villa La Pausa, no doubt driven by his faithful bodyguard Sergeant Murray.

And the work is not complete. In the back of the book Raffety offers a dozen Churchill paintings not yet pinpointed. They are “the elusive ones still to find.” Perhaps there will be a future addendum, with these paintings matched to vivid photographs of the venues today. It would be fun, even if only online, perhaps here. We’ll be hoping for it.

(Any reader bored by pedantic, picayune, obscure meanderings about nothing of importance should stop reading now. For my review of Paul’s book see: “Book of the Year.”)

“Paintatious” was artist Churchill’s word for a scene worthy of his brush. He found many such venues on the French Riviera, which Paul explores so well. But this is a tricky question because “paintatioius” not a real word. It’s a “Churchillism.” (My book, Churchill by Himself, Chapter 3, is full of them.) So the answer to how you spell is: Any way you like!

We thought we could establish his spelling if Churchill used “paintatious” in writing. So we plumbed all his 20 published million words in the Hillsdale College digital archive. Alas, like other famous invented Churchillisms, he mainly used it in conversation. Like “Admiralissimo, Bottlescape, Cantellopolus, Destrigulate, Namsosed, Non-undisinflation” and “Unsordid,” they were mainly in speech or conversation, not in print.

Version 1: “Paintatious”

This was my choice, following WSC’s daughter, Lady Soames. In Churchill by Himself I list as a “passim” this quote: “This is a most paintatious place!” (41) Reference is to Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (1979), 204 (U.S. edition 268). She writes of a holiday in 1921:  “…he continually felt drawn to “paintatious” (his own adjective) places, where the sun might be expected to shine brightly and continuously.” She uses it again on page 407 (English edition):

In the summer of 1948, Winston and Clementine stayed for several weeks in Aix-en-Provence; I had married Christopher Soames in 1947, and we were both included in this lovely holiday. We all stayed in the Roi René Hôtel at Aix, the weather was perfect, and almost every day we used to set out, equipped with a delicious picnic, to spend the day in some lovely and “paintatious” place.

Lady Soames continues the use of “paintatious” in her Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter (1990). Dr. Capet thought Churchill might have spelled it thus when writing to the British Consul in Madeira, looking for a suitable hotel in 1949. Alas not: he only asked for a “paintable” location.

Version 2: “Paintaceous”

I spelled it thus several times in old articles, but only one other author did: Barbara Leaming, in her superb account of his years after 1945, Churchill Defiant. (We rated that the “Book of the Year” in 2010. Haven’t issued another such bouquet until Rafferty’s, although there were some deserving titles.)

Ms. Leaming wrote of WSC’s Lake Como painting holiday in 1945: “They drove along the lakefront while Churchill scouted for what he liked to call a “paintaceous” scene.” (40) Of his sojourn in Miami Beach before his “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, she added: “Seated beside a bed of red poinsettias near the pink brick seaside house his wife had arranged to borrow from a friend, Churchill contentedly scanned the coconut palms overhead in search of a ‘paintaceous’ angle.” (60)

Version 3: “Paintacious”

We finally hit upon the one and only instance where Churchill actually spelled the word in print—introducing a third variation! It was in a letter to Clementine from Marrakesh—yet another painting holiday—on 19 December 1950. (Martin Gilbert, Never Despair, page 577; The Churchill Documents vol. 22, Leader of the Opposition, August 1945-September 1941, page 1976. Speaking of painting destinations he wrote:

Alas Timbuktoo is 1500 miles, so it cannot be considered. However the British Consul at Casablanca, a young man, who met me at the airfield here and came to dinner afterwards, says there is a far better trip the other way—left-handed instead of right. When you go through the mountains you come to two lovely native cities with extraordinary springs of blue water and rocky gorges, which seem by all accounts to be most paintacious.

Madelin Evans at the Churchill Archives Centre kindly answered our request to look at the letter itself (Baroness Clementine Spencer-Churchill Papers 2/38). She confirms the spelling. But this was a typed letter, and they were dictated—so a secretary did the spelling! Still, Churchill himself signed the letter. If he didn’t approve, he would likely have corrected it—as he did the odd word in typed letters. He did so in this one, Madelin says, but did not correct “paintacious.”

Which is Correct?

To be absolutely pedantic, WSC’s only written occurrence, “paintacious,” is correct. But this appeared exactly once, so I don’t think it is dispositive.

Mary Soames’s strikes me as the most melodious version. Also with her spelling, I don’t have to modify my entry in Churchill by Himself.