Catch a Surprising Glimpse at WWII Leader Winston Churchill’s Pastime—Painting—at the First Major British Retrospective Since His Death

More than 50 canvases on view in London detail the prime minister’s quieter moments away from wars, speeches and politics

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

June 5, 2026 1:49 p.m.

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As history museums across the United Kingdom remember Winston Churchill as the country’s wartime prime minister, famous for his politics and the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, one institution is framing the man—and his frames—in another light completely.

The Wallace Collection, an art gallery in London’s Manchester Square, invites visitors to consider Churchill’s paintings. The exhibition, which features more than 50 of his artworks, is the statesman’s first major British retrospective since his death in 1965.

“This show is about assessing him as a painter, which has not really been done before,” Xavier Bray, the Wallace Collection’s director, tells the New York Times’ Leo Sands. “It also shows that leaders are not untouchable. They have their own fragility.”

Churchill turned to painting while in his 40s during World War I during a difficult time both personally and for the British Navy, which he led as First Lord of the Admiralty. Following a significant naval defeat in Turkey, for which he took the fall, Churchill was dismissed from the Admiralty. He joined the army and fought in France.

It was a difficult transition for Churchill—“I am the victim of a political intrigue,” he quipped upon his demotion, “I am finished”—and yet he found solace through the canvas, working with paint while on the Western Front. An early painting from this period depicts an embattled Belgian village. It was one of more than 500 works Churchill completed over his life.

“I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it,” Churchill wrote in a 1920 essay, according to America’s National Churchill Museum. Scholars have speculated that he lived with depression, and that painting served as a productive emotional outlet, especially during periods of global conflict. This essay was later expanded into a book called Painting as a Pastime, in which he shared his love for the art form glowingly: “Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and color, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end.”

Churchill’s practice turned prolific as he rose again to power in the United Kingdom and traveled the world. The paintings on display at the Wallace Collection comprise a biography-of-sorts, offering a scattered timeline of the prime minister’s whereabouts and loose artistic inspirations.

Scenes depict, for example, holidays at the French Riviera; the goldfish pool at his Chartwell estate; a visit to Jerusalem in 1921; and the beach near Walmer Castle along the English coast.

Though Churchill completed only one known canvas during World War II, it is one of his most famous. Following a meeting in Morocco with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss the American invasion of Europe, Churchill stayed behind in Marrakesh and painted The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque (1943), which he later gave to Roosevelt. The painting sold at auction in 2021 for more than $11 million.

As a leader, the prime minister painted “to wipe the mental screen, to reboot, to recalibrate,” Philip Mould, art dealer and gallery owner, tells the Independent’s Nick Curtis. “It’s a very important message to say that Winston Churchill used art as therapy. I would go further still and say that without him having the benefits that art gave him, the Nazi peril may well have prevailed.”

More than half of the works on display in the exhibition, which opened in late May and runs through November, have been loaned from private collections and are not otherwise accessible to the public.

“They have an overpowering joy, a charming amateurishness, made for pleasure and with no pretension,” writes Olivia McEwan for the Guardian. “There is intrigue to be found in watching an amateur keenly learn.”

“Winston Churchill: The Painter” is on view at the Wallace Collection in London, May 23 through November 29.

Christian Thorsberg | Read More

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.