At Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill’s home of 42 years, now owned by the National Trust, lies his painting studio. Reached by a path through the green-gold gardens, it is a standalone building with a little doorway and a soaring ceiling, clearly a place of refuge, and recreation, but also of serious commitment. The walls display a hundred or so paintings, lit by a big window that gives on to the garden and the purple horizon of the Weald of Kent; his armchair is set at the easel, near his twisted paint-tubes, housed in a former cigar humidor. His bespoke painting overcoat is flung over the armchair, his drink of ‘mouthwash’ (a splash of whisky and a lot of soda) set ready.

It was here that Xavier Bray, director of the Wallace Collection, had his revelation. ‘He’s actually really, really good. I saw it when I stepped inside his studio, one day in the summer of 2020,’ says Bray. ‘I just felt an overwhelming sense of the man as an artist, seeing there all around me so many examples of his glorious eye for colour and his post-impressionist evocation of place and mood.’

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‘I rejoice with the brilliant colours, and I am genuinely sorry for the poor browns’

‘I rejoice with the brilliant colours, and I am genuinely sorry for the poor browns’

There has never been a real retrospective of Churchill’s art, Bray explains, although Chartwell has, since its opening in 1966, been a permanent place to see some of his work in context. In 1958-9, his paintings went on a world tour to Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the RA in London – almost three-quarters of a million people saw them. ‘But the tour was only his very best paintings. I wanted to put on a show that traced his development and influences, told the whole story.’ The Wallace Collection was well placed to do it. In 1942 it hosted the exhibition Artists Aid Russia, set up by Clementine Churchill. And there’s the friendship between Churchill and Odette Pol-Roger, née Wallace, who was not only doyenne of his favourite champagne house (‘In victory, I deserve it; in........

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