Joy Ride in a Paint-Box

It was a dramatic moment. "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 . . ." Winston Churchill had just sat down, at 43, to paint his first oil. In a jolly essay entitled "Painting as a Pastime" and published in London last week, the great statesman described where his hobby had led him. Actually the essay had first appeared in 1932 as two chapters in a little-read book called Amid These Storms: Thoughts and Adventures; but Churchill had then been in eclipse--the same kind of eclipse he was in when he first took up painting, after losing his post in the Admiralty in 1915.

He never got to be much good at it, and who cared? Painting, Churchill decided, suited him down to the ground. "There is no subject," he wrote, "on which I feel more humble or yet at the same time more natural . . . Painting a picture is like fighting a battle ... If you need something to occupy your leisure, to divert your mind from the daily round . . . there is close at hand a wonderful new world of thought and craft, a sunlit garden gleaming with light and colour . . ."

As an artist, Churchill made a timid start, but his fighting nature soon reasserted itself. "We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paintbox. And for this Audacity is the only ticket."

Among the chief delights "of the ride, he found, are the things one sees on the way: "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 40 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 cannot pretend to feel impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns."

Even if your painting flops completely, Churchill philosophically concluded, there is no harm done except to your own ego. "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."

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