Painting as a Pastime by Winston S. Churchill

Cover art

Winston S. Churchill

The Right Honourable

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

K.G., O.M., C.H., M.P.

CORNERSTONE LIBRARY


NEW YORK

The hardcover edition of this book was published in the United
States in 1950 by The McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. This
new Cornerstone Library edition is a complete and unabridged
reprint of that original hardcover publication, and is published
by arrangement with Odhams Press Ltd., of London, England.

Reprinted 1965

The essay “Painting as a Pastime” is reprinted from Sir Winston
Churchill’s book Amid These Storms (copyright, 1932) by
permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner’s Sons, N. Y.

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Contents

The Author at his Easel . . . Frontispiece

PAINTING AS A PASTIME

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. A Vase of Flowers

2. The Loup River, Quebec

3. Lakeside Scene, Lake Como

4. The Tapestries at Blenheim Palace

5. The Blue Room, Trent Park

6. Village near Lugano

7. Olive Grove near Monte Carlo

8. Church by Lake Como

9. The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell

10. The Weald of Kent under Snow

11. Orchids

12. The Mill, Saint-Georges-Motel

13. Near Antibes

14. The Mediterranean near Genoa

15. St. Jean, Cap Ferrat

16. Flowers

17. By Lake Lugano

18. Chartwell under Snow

Painting as a Pastime

Many remedies are suggested for the avoidance of
worry and mental overstrain by persons who, over
prolonged periods, have to bear exceptional responsibilities
and discharge duties upon a very large scale. Some advise
exercise, and others, repose. Some counsel travel, and
others, retreat. Some praise solitude, and others, gaiety.
No doubt all these may play their part according to the
individual temperament. But the element which is
constant and common in all of them is Change.

Change is the master key. A man can wear out a particular
part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it,
just in the same way as he can wear out the elbows of his
coat. There is, however, this difference between the living
cells of the brain and inanimate articles: one cannot mend
the frayed elbows of a coat by rubbing the sleeves or
shoulders; but the tired parts of the mind can be rested and
strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts.
It is not enough merely to switch off the lights which play
upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field
of interest must be illuminated. It is no use saying to the
tired ‘mental muscles’—if one may coin such an expression—I
will give you a good rest,’ ‘I will go for a long walk,’
or ‘I will lie down and think of nothing.’ The mind keeps
busy just the same. If it has been weighing and measuring,
it goes on weighing and measuring. If it has been
worrying, it goes on worrying. It is only when new cells are
called into activity, when new stars become the lords of
the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.

A gifted American psychologist has said, ‘Worry is a
spasm of the emotion; the mind catches hold of something
and will not let it go.’ It is useless to argue with the mind
in this condition. The stronger the will, the more futile
the task. One can only gently insinuate something else
into its convulsive grasp. And if this something else is
rightly chosen, if it is really attended by the illumination of
another field of interest, gradually, and often quite swiftly,
the old undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation
and repair begins.

The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is
therefore a policy of first importance to a public man. But
this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or
swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. The
growth of alternative mental interests is a long process.
The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall on good
ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying
fruits are to be at hand when needed.

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at
least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is
no use starting late in life to say: ‘I will take an interest in
this or that.’ Such an attempt only aggravates the strain
of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of
topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet hardly
get any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like;
you have got to like what you do. Broadly speaking,
human beings may be divided into three classes: those who
are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and
those who are bored to death. It is no use offering the
manual labourer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and
effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball
on Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician
or the professional or business man, who has been working
or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or
worry about trifling things at the week-end.

As for the unfortunate people who can command everything
they want, who can gratify every caprice and lay
their hands on almost every object of desire—for them
a new pleasure, a new excitement is only an additional
satiation. In vain they rush frantically round from place to
place, trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere
clatter and motion. For them discipline in one form or
another is the most hopeful path.

It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful
human beings are divided into two classes: first, those
whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; and
secondly, those whose work and pleasure are one. Of these
the former are the majority. They have their compensations.
The long hours in the office or the factory bring
with them, as their reward, not only the means of
sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its
simplest and most modest forms. But Fortune’s favoured
children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural
harmony. For them the working hours are never long
enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays
when they come are grudged as enforced interruptions in
an absorbing vocation. Yet to both classes the need of an
alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a
diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, it may well be
that those whose work is their pleasure are those who
most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their
minds.

The most common form of diversion is reading. In that
vast and varied field millions find their mental comfort.
Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library. ‘A
few books,’ which was Lord Morley’s definition of
anything under five thousand, may give a sense of comfort
and even of complacency. But a day in a library, even of
modest dimensions, quickly dispels these illusory
sensations. As you browse about, taking down book after
book from the shelves and contemplating the vast,
infinitely varied store of knowledge and wisdom which the
human race has accumulated and preserved, pride, even
in its most innocent forms, is chased from the heart by
feelings of awe not untinged with sadness. As one surveys
the mighty array of sages, saints, historians, scientists,
poets and philosophers whose treasures one will never be
able to admire—still less enjoy—the brief tenure of our
existence here dominates mind and spirit.

Think of all the wonderful tales that have been told, and
well told, which you will never know. Think of all the
searching inquiries into matters of great consequence
which you will never pursue. Think of all the delighting
or disturbing ideas that you will never share. Think of
the mighty labours which have been accomplished for
your service, but of which you will never reap the harvest.
But from this melancholy there also comes a calm. The
bitter sweets of a pious despair melt into an agreeable sense
of compulsory resignation from which we turn with
renewed zest to the lighter vanities of life.

‘What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question;
and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But
if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as
it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open
where they will. Read on from the first sentence that
arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of
discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them
back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them
on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in
them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be
your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances.
If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny
them at least a nod of recognition.

It is a mistake to read too many good books when quite
young. A man once told me that he had read all the books
that mattered. Cross-questioned, he appeared to have read
a great many, but they seemed to have made only a slight
impression. How many had he understood? How many
had entered into his mental composition? How many had
been hammered on the anvils of his mind, and afterwards
ranged in an armoury of bright weapons ready to hand?

It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. The
first impression is the one that counts; and if it is a slight
one, it may be all that can be hoped for. A later and
second perusal may recoil from a surface already hardened
by premature contact. Young people should be careful in
their reading, as old people in eating their food. They
should not eat too much. They should chew it well.

Since change is an essential element in diversion of all
kinds, it is naturally more restful and refreshing to read in
a different language from that in which one’s ordinary
daily work is done. To have a second language at your
disposal, even if you only know it enough to read it with
pleasure, is a sensible advantage. Our educationists are
too often anxious to teach children so many different
languages that they never get far enough in any one to
derive any use or enjoyment from their study. The boy
learns enough Latin to detest it; enough Greek to pass an
examination; enough French to get from Calais to Paris;
enough German to exhibit a diploma; enough Spanish or
Italian to tell which is which; but not enough of any to
secure the enormous boon of access to a second literature.
Choose well, choose wisely, and choose one. Concentrate
upon that one. Do not be content until you find yourself
reading in it with real enjoyment. The process of reading
for pleasure in another language rests the mental muscles;
it enlivens the mind by a different sequence and emphasis
of ideas. The mere form of speech excites the activity of
separate brain-cells, relieving in the most effective manner
the fatigue of those in hackneyed use. One may imagine
that a man who blew the trumpet for his living would be
glad to play the violin for his amusement. So it is with
reading in another language than your own.

But reading and book-love in all their forms suffer from
one serious defect: they are too nearly akin to the ordinary
daily round of the brain-worker to give that element of
change and contrast essential to real relief. To restore
psychic equilibrium we should call into use those parts of
the mind which direct both eye and hand. Many men
have found great advantage in practising a handicraft for
pleasure. Joinery, chemistry, book-binding, even
brick-laying—if one were interested in them and skilful at
them—would give a real relief to the over-tired brain. But, best
of all and easiest to procure are sketching and painting in
all their forms. I consider myself very lucky that late in
life I have been able to develop this new taste and pastime.
Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time, and
I shall venture in the pages that follow to express the
gratitude I feel.

Painting is a companion with whom one may hope to
walk a great part of life’s journey,

‘Age cannot wither her nor custom stale


Her infinite variety.‘

One by one the more vigorous sports and exacting games
fall away. Exceptional exertions are purchased only by a
more pronounced and more prolonged fatigue. Muscles
may relax, and feet and hands slow down; the nerve of
youth and manhood may become less trusty. But painting
is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to 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 surly advance 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.

To have reached the age of forty without ever handling
a brush or fiddling with a pencil, to have regarded with
mature eye the painting of pictures of any kind as a
mystery, to have stood agape before the chalk of the
pavement artist, and then suddenly to find oneself plunged in
the middle of a new and intense form of interest and
action with paints and palettes and canvases, and not to
be discouraged by results, is an astonishing and enriching
experience. I hope it may be shared by others. I should
be glad if these lines induced others to try the experiment
which I have tried, and if some at least were to find
themselves dowered with an absorbing new amusement delightful
to themselves, and at any rate not violently harmful to
man or beast.

I hope this is modest enough: because there is no subject
on which I feel more humble or yet at the same time more
natural. I do not presume to explain how to paint, but
only how to get enjoyment. Do not turn the superior eye
of critical passivity upon these efforts. Buy a paint-box
and have a try. If you need something to occupy your
leisure, to divert your mind from the daily round, to
illuminate your holidays, do not be too ready to believe
that you cannot find what you want here. Even at the
advanced age of forty! It would be a sad pity to shuffle
or scramble along through one’s playtime with golf and
bridge, pottering, loitering, shifting from one heel to the
other, wondering what on earth to do—as perhaps is the
fate of some unhappy beings—when all the while, if you
only knew, there is close at hand a wonderful new world
of thought and craft, a sunlit garden gleaming with light
and colour of which you have the key in your waistcoat-pocket.
Inexpensive independence, a mobile and perennial
pleasure apparatus, new mental food and exercise, the old
harmonies and symmetries in an entirely different
language, an added interest to every common scene, an
occupation for every idle hour, an unceasing voyage of
entrancing discovery—these are high prizes. Make quite
sure they are not yours. After all, if you try, and fail, there
is not much harm done. The nursery will grab what the
studio has rejected. And then you can always go out and
kill some animal, humiliate some rival on the links, or
despoil some friend across the green table. You will not
be worse off in any way. In fact you will be better off.
You will know ‘beyond a peradventure,’ to quote a
phrase disagreeably reminiscent, that that is really what
you were meant to do in your hours of relaxation.

But if, on the contrary, you are inclined—late in life
though it be—to reconnoitre a foreign sphere of limitless
extent, then be persuaded that the first quality that is
needed is Audacity. There really is no time for the
deliberate approach. Two years of drawing-lessons, three
years of copying woodcuts, five years of plaster
casts—these are for the young. They have enough to bear.
And this thorough grounding is for those who, hearing
the call in the morning of their days, are able to make
painting their paramount lifelong vocation. The truth and
beauty of line and form which by the slightest touch or
twist of the brush a real artist imparts to every feature of
his design must be founded on long, hard, persevering
apprenticeship and a practice so habitual that it has
become instinctive. We must not be too ambitious. We
cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves
with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is
the only ticket.

I shall now relate my personal experience. When I left
the Admiralty at the end of May, 1915, I still remained a
member of the Cabinet and of the War Council. In this
position I knew everything and could do nothing. The
change from the intense executive activities of each day’s
work at the Admiralty to the narrowly measured duties
of a counsellor left me gasping. Like a sea-beast fished up
from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my
veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had
great anxiety and no means of relieving it; I had vehement
convictions and small power to give effect to them. I had
to watch the unhappy casting-away of great opportunities,
and the feeble execution of plans which I had launched and
in which I heartily believed. I had long hours of utterly
unwonted leisure in which to contemplate the frightful
unfolding of the War. At a moment when every fibre of
my being was inflamed to action, I was forced to remain
a spectator of the tragedy, placed cruelly in a front seat.
And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my
rescue—out of charity and out of chivalry, because after
all she had nothing to do with me—and said, ‘Are these
toys any good to you? They amuse some people.’

Some experiments one Sunday in the country with the
children’s paint-box led me to procure the next morning
a complete outfit for painting in oils.

Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the
next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The
palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose
the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with
destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by
a silent veto. But after all the sky on this occasion was
unquestionably blue, and a pale blue at that. There could
be no doubt that blue paint mixed with white should be
put on the top part of the canvas. One really does not need
to have had an artist’s training to see that. It is a
starting-point open to all. So very gingerly I mixed a little blue
paint on the palette with a very small brush, and then
with infinite precaution made a mark about as big as a
bean upon the affronted snow-white shield. It was a
challenge, a deliberate challenge; but so subdued, so halting,
indeed so cataleptic, that it deserved no response. At that
moment the loud approaching sound of a motor-car was
heard in the drive. From this chariot there stepped swiftly
and lightly none other than the gifted wife of Sir John
Lavery. ‘Painting! But what are you hesitating about?
Let me have a brush—the big one.’ Splash into the turpentine,
wallop into the blue and the white, frantic flourish
on the palette—clean no longer—and then several large,
fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the absolutely
cowering canvas. Anyone could see that it could not hit back.
No evil fate avenged the jaunty violence. The canvas
grinned in helplessness before me. The spell was broken.
The sickly inhibitions rolled away. I seized the largest
brush and fell upon my victim with Berserk fury. I have
never felt any awe of a canvas since.

Everyone knows the feelings with which one stands
shivering on a spring-board, the shock when a friendly
foe steals up behind and hurls you into the flood, and the
ardent glow which thrills you as you emerge breathless
from the plunge.

This beginning with Audacity, or being thrown into the
middle of it, is already a very great part of the art of
painting. But there is more in it than that.

‘La peinture a l’huile


    Est bien difficile,


Mais c’est beaucoup plus beau


    Que la peinture a l’eau.‘

I write no word in disparagement of water-colours. But
there really is nothing like oils. You have a medium at
your disposal which offers real power, if you only can find
out how to use it. Moreover, it is easier to get a certain
distance along the road by its means than by water-colour.
First of all, you can correct mistakes much more easily.
One sweep of the palette-knife ‘lifts’ the blood and tears
of a morning from the canvas and enables a fresh start to
be made; indeed the canvas is all the better for past
impressions. Secondly, you can approach your problem from
any direction. You need not build downwards awkwardly
from white paper to your darkest dark. You may 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). You can build it on layer after layer
if you like. You can keep on experimenting. You can
change your plan to meet the exigencies of time or
weather. And always remember you can scrape it all away.

Just to paint is great fun. The colours are lovely to look
at and delicious to squeeze out. Matching them, however
crudely, with what you see is fascinating and absolutely
absorbing. Try it if you have not done so—before you die.
As one slowly begins to escape from the difficulties of
choosing the right colours and laying them on in the right
places and in the right way, wider considerations come
into view. One begins to see, for instance, that painting a
picture is like fighting a battle; and trying to paint a
picture is, I suppose, like trying to fight a battle. It is, if
anything, more exciting than fighting it successfully. But
the principle is the same. It is the same kind of problem as
unfolding a long, sustained, interlocked argument. It is a
proposition which, whether of few or numberless parts,
is commanded by a single unity of conception. And we
think—though I cannot tell—that painting a great picture
must require an intellect on the grand scale. There must be
that all-embracing view which presents the beginning and
the end, the whole and each part, as one instantaneous
impression retentively and untiringly held in the mind.
When we look at the larger Turners—canvases yards wide
and tall—and observe that they are all done in one piece
and represent one single second of time, and that every
innumerable detail, however small, however distant,
however subordinate, is set forth naturally and in its true
proportion and relation, without effort, without failure, we
must feel in the presence of an intellectual manifestation the
equal in quality and intensity of the finest achievements
of warlike action, of forensic argument, or of scientific or
philosophical adjudication.

In all battles two things are usually required of the
Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and,
secondly, to keep a strong reserve. Both these are also
obligatory upon the painter. To make a plan, thorough
reconnaissance of the country where the battle is to be
fought is needed. Its fields, its mountains, its rivers, its
bridges, its trees, its flowers, its atmosphere—all require
and repay attentive observation from a special point of
view. One is quite astonished to find how many things
there are in the landscape, and in every object in it, one
never noticed before. And, this is a tremendous new
pleasure and interest which invests every walk or drive with
an added object. So many colours on the hillside, each
different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections
in the pool, each a key lower than what they repeat;
such lovely lights gilding or silvering surface or outline,
all tinted exquisitely with pale colour, rose, orange, green
or violet. I found myself instinctively as I walked noting
the tint and character of a leaf, the dreamy, purple shades
of mountains, the exquisite lacery of winter branches the
dim, pale silhouettes of far horizons. And I had lived for
over forty years without ever noticing any of them except
in a general way, as one might look at a crowd and say,
‘What a lot of people!’

I think this heightened sense of observation of Nature is
one of the chief delights that have come to me through
trying to paint. No doubt many people who are lovers of
art have acquired it in a high degree without actually
practising. But I expect that nothing will make one observe
more quickly or more thoroughly than having to face the
difficulty of representing the thing observed. And mind
you, if you do observe accurately and with refinement,
and if you do record what you have seen with tolerable
correspondence, the result follows on the canvas with
startling obedience. Even if only four or five main
features are seized and truly recorded, these by themselves
will carry a lot of ill-success or half-success. Answer five
big questions out of all the hundreds in the examination
paper correctly and well, and though you may not win a
prize, at any rate you will not be absolutely ploughed.

But in order to make his plan, the General must not
only reconnoitre the battle-ground, he must also study the
achievements of the great Captains of the past. He must
bring the observations he has collected in the field into
comparison with the treatment of similar incidents by
famous chiefs. Then the galleries of Europe take on a new—and
to me at least a severely practical—interest. ‘This,
then, is how —— painted a cataract. Exactly, and there is
that same light I noticed last week in the waterfall at ——.’ And
so on. You see the difficulty that baffled you yesterday;
and you see how easily it has been overcome by a
great or even by a skilful painter. Not only is your
observation of Nature sensibly improved and developed, but
you look at the masterpieces of art with an analysing and
a comprehending eye.

The whole world is open with all its treasures. The
simplest objects have their beauty. Every garden presents
innumerable fascinating problems. Every land, every
parish, has its own tale to tell. And there are many lands
differing from each other in countless ways, and each
presenting delicious variants of colour, light, form, and
definition. Obviously, then, armed with a paint-box, one cannot
be bored, one cannot be left at a loose end, one cannot
‘have several days on one’s hands.’ Good gracious! what
there is to admire and how little time there is to see it in!
For the first time one begins to envy Methuselah. No
doubt he made a very indifferent use of his opportunities.

But it is in the use and withholding of their reserves that
the great Commanders have generally excelled. After all,
when once the last reserve has been thrown in, the
Commander’s part is played. If that does not win the battle,
he has nothing else to give. The event must be left to luck
and to the fighting troops. But these last, in the absence
of high direction, are apt to get into sad confusion, all
mixed together in a nasty mess, without order or plan—and
consequently without effect. Mere masses count no
more. The largest brush, the brightest colours, cannot even
make an impression. The pictorial battlefield becomes a
sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war. It is
evident there has been a serious defeat. Even though the
General plunges in himself and emerges bespattered, as he
sometimes does, he will not retrieve the day.

In painting, the reserves consist in Proportion or Relation.
And it is here that the art of the painter marches
along the road which is traversed by all the greatest
harmonies in thought. At one side of the palette there is
white, at the other black; and neither is ever used
‘neat.’ Between these two rigid limits all the action must lie, all
the power required must be generated. Black and white
themselves, placed in juxtaposition, make no great
impression; and yet they are the most that you can do in pure
contrast. It is wonderful—after one has tried and failed
often—to see how easily and surely the true artist is able
to produce every effect of light and shade, of sunshine and
shadow, of distance or nearness, simply by expressing
justly the relations between the different planes and
surfaces with which he is dealing. We think that this is
founded upon a sense of proportion, trained no doubt by
practice, but which in its essence is a frigid manifestation
of mental power and size. We think that the same mind’s
eye that can justly survey and appraise and prescribe
beforehand the values of a truly great picture in one
all-embracing regard, in one flash of simultaneous and
homogeneous comprehension, would also with a certain
acquaintance with the special technique be able to
pronounce with sureness upon any other high activity of the
human intellect. This was certainly true of the great Italians.

I have written in this way to show how varied are the
delights which may be gained by those who enter
hopefully and thoughtfully upon the pathway of painting;
how enriched they will be in their daily vision, how
fortified in their independence, how happy in their leisure.
Whether you feel that your soul is pleased by the
conception or contemplation of harmonies, or that your mind
is stimulated by the aspect of magnificent problems, or
whether you are content to find fun in trying to observe
and depict the jolly things you see, the vistas of possibility
are limited only by the shortness of life. Every day you
may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there
will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening,
ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will
never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from
discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

Try it, then, before it is too late and before you mock
at me. Try it while there is time to overcome the
preliminary difficulties. Learn enough of the language in
your prime to open this new literature to your age.
Plant a garden in which you can sit when digging days
are done. It may be only a small garden, but you will see
it grow. Year by year it will bloom and ripen. Year by
year it will be better cultivated. The weeds will be cast
out. The fruit-trees will be pruned and trained. The
flowers will bloom in more beautiful combinations. There
will be sunshine there even in the winter-time, and cool
shade, and the play of shadow on the pathway in the
shining days of June.

I must say I like bright colours. I agree with Ruskin in
his denunciation of that school of painting who ‘eat
slate-pencil and chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer
and purer than strawberries and plums.’ I cannot pretend
to feel impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the
brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor
browns. When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable
portion of my first million years in painting, and so
get to the bottom of the subject. But then I shall require
a still gayer palette than I get here below. I expect orange
and vermilion will be the darkest, dullest colours upon it,
and beyond them there will be a whole range of wonderful
new colours which will delight the celestial eye.

Chance led me one autumn to a secluded nook on the
Côte d’Azur, between Marseilles and Toulon, and there
I fell in with one or two painters who revelled in the
methods of the modern French school. These were
disciples of Cézanne. They view Nature as a mass of
shimmering light in which forms and surfaces are comparatively
unimportant, indeed hardly visible, but which gleams and
glows with beautiful harmonies and contrasts of colour.
Certainly it was of great interest to me to come suddenly
in contact with this entirely different way of looking at
things. I had hitherto painted the sea flat, with long,
smooth strokes of mixed pigment in which the tints
varied only by gradations. Now I must try to represent it
by innumerable small separate lozenge-shaped points and
patches of colour—often pure colour—so that it looked
more like a tessellated pavement than a marine picture. It
sounds curious. All the same, do not be in a hurry to reject
the method. Go back a few yards and survey the result. Each
of these little points of colour is now playing his part in the
general effect. Individually invisible, he sets up a strong
radiation, of which the eye is conscious without detecting
the cause. Look also at the blue of the Mediterranean. How
can you depict and record it? Certainly not by any single
colour that was ever manufactured. The only way in which
that luminous intensity of blue can be simulated is by this
multitude of tiny points of varied colour all in true relation
to the rest of the scheme. Difficult? Fascinating!

Nature presents itself to the eye through the agency of
these individual points of light, each of which sets up the
vibrations peculiar to its colour. The brilliancy of a picture
must therefore depend partly upon the frequency with
which these points are found on any given area of the
canvas, and partly on their just relation to one another.
Ruskin says in his Elements of Drawing, from which I have
already quoted, ‘You will not, in Turner’s largest oil
pictures, perhaps six or seven feet long by four or five
high, find one spot of colour as large as a grain of wheat
ungradated.’ But the gradations of Turner differ from
those of the modern French school by being gently and
almost imperceptibly evolved one from another instead
of being bodily and even roughly separated; and the
brush of Turner followed the form of the objects he
depicted, while our French friends often seem to take a
pride in directly opposing it. For instance, they would
prefer to paint a sea with up and down strokes rather than
with horizontal; or a tree-trunk from right to left rather
than up and down. This, I expect, is due to falling in love
with one’s theories, and making sacrifices of truth to
them in order to demonstrate fidelity and admiration.

But surely we owe a debt to those who have so wonderfully
vivified, brightened, and illuminated modern landscape
painting. Have not Manet and Monet, Cézanne and
Matisse, rendered to painting something of the same
service which Keats and Shelley gave to poetry after the
solemn and ceremonious literary perfections of the
eighteenth century? They have brought back to the pictorial
art a new draught of joie de vivre; and the beauty of
their work is instinct with gaiety, and floats in sparkling air.

I do not expect these masters would particularly appreciate
my defence, but I must avow an increasing attraction
to their work. Lucid and exact expression is one of the
characteristics of the French mind. The French language
has been made the instrument of the admirable gift.
Frenchmen talk and write just as well about painting as
they have done about love, about war, about diplomacy,
or cooking. Their terminology is precise and complete.
They are therefore admirably equipped to be teachers in
the theory of any of these arts. Their critical faculty is so
powerfully developed that it is perhaps some restraint
upon achievement. But it is a wonderful corrective to
others as well as to themselves.

My French friend, for instance, after looking at some of
my daubs, took me round the galleries of Paris, pausing
here and there. Wherever he paused, I found myself
before a picture which I particularly admired. He then
explained that it was quite easy to tell, from the kind of
things I had been trying to do, what were the doings I
liked. Never having taken any interest in pictures till I
tried to paint, I had no preconceived opinions. I just felt,
for reasons I could not fathom, that I liked some much
more than others. I was astonished that anyone else
should, on the most cursory observation of my work, be
able so surely to divine a taste which I had never
consciously formed. My friend said that it is not a bad thing
to know nothing at all about pictures, but to have a
matured mind trained in other things and a new strong
interest for painting. The elements are there from which
a true taste in art can be formed with time and guidance,
and there are no obstacles or imperfect conceptions in the
way. I hope this is true. Certainly the last part is true.

Once you begin to study it, all Nature is equally
interesting and equally charged with beauty. I was shown a
picture by Cézanne of a blank wall of a house, which he
had made instinct with the most delicate lights and colours.
Now I often amuse myself when I am looking at a wall or a
flat surface of any kind by trying to distinguish all the
different colours and tints which can be discerned upon it,
and considering whether these arise from reflections or
from natural hue. You would be astonished the first time
you tried this to see how many and what beautiful colours
there are even in the most commonplace objects, and the
more carefully and frequently you look the more
variations do you perceive.

But these are no reasons for limiting oneself to the
plainest and most ordinary objects and scenes. Mere
prettiness of scene, to be sure, is not needed for a beautiful
picture. In fact, artificially-made pretty places are very
often a hindrance to a good picture. Nature will hardly
stand a double process of beautification: one layer of
idealism on top of another is too much of a good thing.
But a vivid scene, a brilliant atmosphere, novel and charming
lights, impressive contrasts, if they strike the eye all
at once, arouse an interest and an ardour which will
certainly be reflected in the work which you try to do, and
will make it seem easier.

It would be interesting if some real authority investigated
carefully the part which memory plays in painting.
We look at the object with an intent regard, then at the
palette, and thirdly at the canvas. The canvas receives a
message dispatched usually a few seconds before from the
natural object. But it has come through a post-office en
route. It has been transmitted in code. It has been turned
from light into paint. It reaches the canvas a cryptogram.
Not until it has been placed in its correct relation to
everything else that is on the canvas can it be deciphered, is its
meaning apparent, is it translated once again from mere
pigment into light. And the light this time is not of
Nature but of Art. The whole of this considerable process
is carried through on the wings or the wheels of memory.
In most cases we think it is the wings—airy and quick like
a butterfly from flower to flower. But all heavy traffic and
all that has to go a long journey must travel on wheels.

In painting in the open air the sequence of actions is so
rapid that the process of translation into and out of
pigment may seem to be unconscious. But all the greatest
landscapes have been painted indoors, and often long after
the first impressions were gathered. In a dim cellar the
Dutch or Italian master recreated the gleaming ice of a
Netherlands carnival or the lustrous sunshine of Venice
or the Campagna. Here, then, is required a formidable
memory of the visual kind. Not only do we develop our
powers of observation, but also those of carrying the
record—of carrying it through an extraneous medium and
of reproducing it, hours, days, or even months after the
scene has vanished or the sunlight died.

I was told by a friend that when Whistler guided a school
in Paris he made his pupils observe their model on the
ground floor, and then run upstairs and paint their picture
piece by piece on the floor above. As they became more
proficient, he put their easels up a storey higher, till at last
the elite were scampering with their decision up six flights
into the attic—praying it would not evaporate on the
way. This is, perhaps, only a tale. But it shows effectively
of what enormous importance a trained, accurate, retentive
memory must be to an artist; and conversely what a useful
exercise painting may be for the development of an
accurate and retentive memory.

There is no better exercise for the would-be artist than
to study and devour a picture, and then, without looking
at it again, to attempt the next day to reproduce it.
Nothing can more exactly measure the progress both of
observation and memory. It is still harder to compose
out of many separate, well-retained impressions, aided
though they be by sketches and colour notes, a new, complete
conception. But this is the only way in which great
landscapes have been painted—or can be painted. The size
of the canvas alone precludes its being handled out of
doors. The fleeting light imposes a rigid time-limit. The
same light never returns. One cannot go back day after
day without the picture getting stale. The painter must
choose between a rapid impression, fresh and warm and
living, but probably deserving only of a short life, and the
cold, profound, intense effort of memory, knowledge, and
will-power, prolonged perhaps for weeks, from which a
masterpiece can alone result. It is much better not to fret
too much about the latter. Leave to the masters of art
trained by a lifetime of devotion the wonderful process
of picture-building and picture-creation. Go out into the
sunlight and be happy with what you see.

Painting is complete as a distraction. I know of nothing
which, without exhausting the body, more entirely
absorbs the mind. Whatever the worries of the hour or
the threats of the future, once the picture has begun to
flow along, there is no room for them in the mental screen.
They pass out into shadow and darkness. All one’s mental
light, such as it is, becomes concentrated on the task.
Time stands respectfully aside, and it is only after many
hesitations that luncheon knocks gruffly at the door.
When I have had to stand up on parade, or even, I regret
to say, in church, for half an hour at a time, I have always
felt that the erect position is not natural to man, has only
been painfully acquired, and is only with fatigue and
difficulty maintained. But no one who is fond of painting
finds the slightest inconvenience, as long as the interest
holds, in standing to paint for three or four hours at a
stretch.

Lastly, let me say a word on painting as a spur to travel.
There is really nothing like it. Every day and all day is
provided with its expedition and its occupation—cheap,
attainable, innocent, absorbing, recuperative. The vain
racket of the tourist gives place to the calm enjoyment of
the philosopher, intensified by an enthralling sense of
action and endeavour. Every country where the sun shines
and every district in it, has a theme of its own. The lights,
the atmosphere, the aspect, the spirit, are all different;
but each has its native charm. Even if you are only a poor
painter you can feel the influence of the scene, guiding
your brush, selecting the tubes you squeeze on to the
palette. Even if you cannot portray it as you see it, you
feel it, you know it, and you admire it for ever. When
people rush about Europe in the train from one glittering
centre of work or pleasure to another, passing—at
enormous expense—through a series of mammoth hotels and
blatant carnivals, they little know what they are missing,
and how cheaply priceless things can be obtained. The
painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to
place, always on the look out for some brilliant butterfly
of a picture which can be caught and set up and carried
safely home.

Now I am learning to like painting even on dull days.
But in my hot youth I demanded sunshine. Sir William
Orpen advised me to visit Avignon on account of its
wonderful light, and certainly there is no more delightful
centre for a would-be painter’s activities: then Egypt,
fierce and brilliant, presenting in infinite variety the single
triplex theme of the Nile, the desert, and the sun; or
Palestine, a land of rare beauty—the beauty of the
turquoise and the opal—which well deserves the attention of
some real artist, and has never been portrayed to the
extent that is its due. And what of India? Who has ever
interpreted its lurid splendours? But after all, if only the
sun will shine, one does not need to go beyond one’s own
country. There is nothing more intense than the burnished
steel and gold of a Highland stream; and at the beginning
and close of almost every day the Thames displays to the
citizens of London glories and delights which one must
travel far to rival.

SOME PAINTINGS


BY


The Right Honourable


SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL


K.G., O.M., C.H., M.P.

1. A Vase of Flowers

2. The Loup River, Quebec

3. Lakeside Scene, Lake Como

4. The Tapestries at Blenheim Palace

5. The Blue Room, Trent Park

6. Village near Lugano

7. Olive Grove near Monte Carlo

8. Church by Lake Como

9. The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell

10. The Weald of Kent under Snow

11. Orchids

12. The Mill, Saint-Georges-Motel

13. Near Antibes

14. The Mediterranean near Genoa

15. St. Jean, Cap Ferrat

16. Flowers

17. By Lake Lugano

18. Chartwell under Snow

[End of Painting as a Pastime, by Winston S. Churchill]