Defeat is not one of the primary words associated with Sir Winston Churchill’s career. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, he gave the prophetic “Iron Curtain Speech” at Westminster College in 1946, and, most importantly, he emerged victorious during World War II as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. What many people don’t know is that Churchill did in fact experience the agony of defeat…and that’s what fueled his second life as a painter. Churchill’s best paintings are now being displayed at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in collaboration with the National Churchill Museum at Westminster College in Fulton. This year marks the 50 th anniversary of Churchill’s death and the 100 th anniversary of his first painting. Timothy Riley, the exhibition’s curator, said that Churchill began painting in 1915 at the age of 40 after his first large-scale defeat, during World War I. “He was a late bloomer as far as painting was concerned,” Riley said.
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