A Present from Sir Winston Churchill to Vivien Leigh
A Still Life
of Roses Picked from his Garden at Chartwell
Unveiled for the First Time
Alongside A
Painting by Vivien Leigh
Revealing the Little-Known
Story of the Friendship
Between the Prime
Minister and Legendary Star of Gone With the Wind
The paintings will be
on public exhibition from 17 July – 11 August
Ahead of
Sotheby’s sale of the Personal Collection of Vivien Leigh on 26 September
34-35 New Bond
Street, W1A 2AA
Sir Winston Churchill, Roses
in a Glass Vase, Estimate £70,000-100,000
Winston Churchill in his studio at Chartwell. Roses in a Glass Vase can be seen hanging on the wall beside him.
“Whenever I feel
particularly low or depressed I look at those three rosebuds. The thought and
the friendship in the painting is such a great encouragement to me… and I have
the determination to go on.” - Vivien
Leigh
A still-life of roses by Sir
Winston Churchill, given to screen-legend Vivien Leigh, has been unveiled for
the first time at Sotheby’s in London. Never seen in
public before, the painting reveals the little-known story of the deep and
long-lasting friendship between the Prime Minister and the legendary star of Gone with the Wind.
Depicting flowers picked from Churchill’s
beloved garden at Chartwell, his country home in Kent, Roses in a Glass Vase
was gifted to Vivien in 1951, during a midnight supper hosted by Churchill on
the birthday of Leigh’s husband, Sir Laurence Olivier. Churchill’s flower
paintings were given only to
those dearest to him, with other recipients including his youngest daughter
Mary.*
Leigh treasured the present so greatly
that the work hung on the wall opposite her bed. She loved flowers and
collected other artists’ flower paintings too, including Jacob Epstein’s Peonies (est. £1,500-2,000) and Matthew
Smith’s Flowers in a Vase (est.
£10,000-15,000), included in Sotheby’s sale. Fittingly, on Churchill’s 90th
birthday she sent him a bouquet as a gift.
Although best known for his landscape paintings, Churchill was also a master
of the still life genre, and his flower paintings held a deeply
personal resonance. The flowers Churchill grew at Chartwell, his own private
corner of England, were hugely important to him, and he drew myriad inspiration from the mallows, nasturtiums, tulips,
daffodils and roses that filled the flowerbeds.
The house itself was often filled with masses
of flowers, and when driven indoors by the English weather, Churchill settled
down to paint the floral groups that adorned the house.
Estimated at £70,000-100,000, the painting is now set to be one of
the star lots in Sotheby’s
sale of Leigh’s personal collection on 26 September 2017. It will be sold
together with a photograph of Winston Churchill in his studio at Chartwell,
showing Roses in a Glass Vase hanging
on the wall beside him.
Churchill was not the only
painter in this friendship however, as revealed through further lots discovered
in Leigh’s collection. Alongside a copy of Churchill’s book, ‘Painting As a
Pastime’, can be found a never-before-seen painting of an Italian landscape by
Leigh herself, and her artist’s bag. It seems that Churchill himself inspired
Leigh to pick up a paint brush. Please find more information below.
“Churchill's
gift of a still life of roses to Vivien speaks volumes about the respect and
regard he felt for her. Theirs was not a passing acquaintance, but a friendship
that endured for more than twenty years. He inspired her to begin painting and
it is poignant to think that they shared a mutual solace in an activity where
they found a refuge from all the trials and tribulations of daily life.” - Frances
Christie, Head of Sotheby’s Modern & Post-War British Art Department
An exhibition of highlights is on view at Sotheby’s 34-35 New Bond
Street until 11 August 2017. Full auction preview open 22-25 September 2017.
Vivien The Artist
In 1950, a year before Vivien received Roses in a Glass Vase, she
was the recipient of another gift from Churchill, an inscribed copy of his book, ‘Painting as a Pastime’ (est. £1,500-2,000). A meditation on painting, this book espouses the therapeutic
benefits of making art.
Vivien was a passionate collector and patron,
and more than twenty artworks from her private collection are included in the
sale, including works by William Nicholson, Harold Gilman and John Piper. As
she travelled the world – to Australia, to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), to Algiers in
the midst of World War II, to Hollywood – she took her favourite paintings with
her to adorn the walls of her hotel and theatre dressing rooms.
However, Churchill and ‘Painting as a Pastime’ clearly inspired Vivien Leigh to paint as
demonstrated by one of her own works, a delightful Italian landscape (est. £200-300)
included in the sale, alongside her canvas artist's bag containing a wooden box
with oil paints and a travelling folding easel (est. £800-1,200).
“Painting is a friend who
makes no undue demands, excites no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace
even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a screen between us and the
envious eyes of time or the sultry advances of decrepitude. Happy are the
painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will
keep them company to the end, or almost to the end, of the day.”
Sir Winston Churchill, Painting
as a Pastime, 1921/22
Leigh & Churchill’s
Friendship
“By Jove, she’s a clinker!” Winston Churchill on Vivien Leigh
Leigh and Churchill first met in 1936, when
they were introduced by British film producer Alexander Korda on the set of the
film Fire Over England. Vivien was a
little-known actress at the time and Churchill an established Parliamentarian
more than twice her age, but this was a start of a friendship that would last
for thirty years, until Churchill’s death in 1965.
Churchill was a great fan of cinema, and of
Vivien Leigh’s work in particular. On the release of Gone with the Wind in London in 1940, Churchill,
by then Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, stayed up until 2am watching the
film.
And, when Lady Hamilton was released the
following year, this became Churchill’s all-time favourite film. He is said to
have watched it countless times in 1942 during weekends spent at Ditchley Park,
a friend’s Oxfordshire home where he retreated to for safety during the war,
much to the frustration of his fellow guests.
During his later
years, Churchill had his own private cinema installed at Chartwell, and Lady Hamilton remained a firm favourite,
once again received the most viewings. It is likely Churchill himself
had originally proposed to Korda the idea of making a stirring war-time film
about Nelson and Lady Hamilton with Leigh and Olivier starring in the leading
roles.
St James’s Theatre
Vivien’s friendship
with Churchill ran deeper than many people knew, as attested to by a letter
included in the sale dated 18 July 1957 (est. £2,000-3,000), in which Churchill
secretly promises to donate money to St James’s Theatre, which Vivien was trying
to save at the time.
She had made an impulsive and staunch defence against the
theatre's demolition in the House of Lords a week earlier, on 11 July, and was
promptly escorted out, an event which garnered front page headlines.
Though Churchill
was unable to publicly support Vivien, in his letter he offers to donate £500
to the cause and – with a barely concealed chuckle of admiration – admonishes
her: “I hope you will succeed in your
defence of St. James’s Theatre, though as a parliamentarian I cannot approve
your disorderly method… I shall be definitely committed to the cause”.
Vivien’s great personal
attachment to the theatre, and her insistence on maintaining it for the sake of
England, saw her march along Fleet Street and the Strand with Athene Sayler,
another actress, ringing a hand bell to draw attention to a sandwich board she
was wearing, which featured a written protest about the theatre’s demolition.
In an interview many years later, Sayler recalled Vivien saying that she would
go to a restaurant and everybody would look at her, but if she walked down the
middle of the street with a placard, nobody took the slightest bit of notice.
Vivien’s actions
prompted fun cartoons which are included in the sale: from Giles, “Vivien,
dear, repeat after Larry: I will be a good girl and come straight to
rehearsals. I must not join protest makers on the way. I must not call the House
of Lords and wake everybody up…", inscribed, ‘With best wishes / from
Giles’ (est. £800-1,200), and, from Osbert Lancaster, I THINK IT'S A MEMBER OF
THE HOUSE OF LORDS PROTESTING AGAINST THE DEMOLITION OF VIVIEN, signed and
dated, Osbert '57 (est. £400-600).
*Magnolia, a flower painting given by
Churchill to his daughter, Mary Soames sold for £698,500 at Sotheby’s London in
December 2014 (est. £100,000 -150,000)
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