Each Overall: 38cm (15in) x 31cm (12in)
The present pair of photographic portraits were sold to raise money for the war effort in September 1941, as attested by contemporary press cuttings from 'The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post’ (19 September 1941) applied to the original back boards: - ‘Premier Picture. A signed photograph of the Prime Minister was sold at an auction sale at Woodstock yesterday for £250 by his cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, Mayor of Woodstock, whose 44th birthday it was. The sale was made on the occasion of War Weapons Week and the purchaser, Mr A.E. Walter of Solihull, also paid £70 for a signed photograph of Mrs. Churchill.’
The portrait photograph of Winston Churchill was taken by Edward Steichen in 1932 and printed by Harrods at the time of national crisis in 1940 to mark the sitter’s appointment as prime minister and leader of the all-party coalition wartime government. Signed and dated by the sitter ‘Winston S. Churchill / 1941’ on the sheet beneath image. Further inscribed pencil ‘Copy by’ / ‘Harrods’, mounted on card. Image 20.2cm x 14cm. Framed and glazed. The bromide print portrait of Clementine, seated pouring tea at Chartwell, with William Orpen's portrait of Winston to the left, by Cecil Beaton in 1940. Signed by the sitter ‘Clementine S. Churchill’ on the mount. Image 25cm x 20cm. Framed and glazed.
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The striking three quarter length portrait of Churchill was commissioned by Vanity Fair and taken in New York in 1932, the work of the internationally renowned photographer Edward Steichen. Out of office between 1929 and 1939, Churchill concentrated on his writing to sustain him through his ‘Wilderness Years’, producing books and newspaper articles at a phenomenal rate and spending every penny of his substantial earnings. The US was a lucrative market and in December 1931 he was in New York at the start of a 40-stop lecture tour when he was hit by a car, and, to use his own phrase, very nearly ‘squashed like a gooseberry’, while making his way to dine with the financier Bernard Baruch on the Upper East Side. Churchill was rushed to hospital where remained for two weeks and where he obtained a Prohibition-busting doctor’s note that allowed him his customary intake of champagne, and whiskies and sodas; - ‘…the post-accident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters.’
After a brief sojourn in the Bahamas, Churchill returned to New York in March 1932, was photographed By Steichen for Vanity Fair and embarked on a 14-stop version of his cancelled lecture tour. Eager to make up lost earnings, he turned the incident at 76th and Fifth into a money making exercise with an article for the Daily Mail entitled ‘My New York Misadventure’. The Steichen portrait later served as the dust jacket photograph for ‘While England Slept’, the U.S. edition of Churchill’s 1938 book ‘Arms and the Covenant’, which highlighted the Britain's lack of military preparation to face the threat of Nazi Germany.
Edward Jean Steichen (1879-1973) was born in Luxembourg and grew up in Milwaukee. He developed careers as a photographer, painter, and curator. He was the most frequently shown photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. During the First World War, he commanded the photographic division of the American Expeditionary Forces, and afterwards gradual moving into fashion photography. His photos for the magazine Art et Décoration in 1911 are regarded as the first modern fashion photographs ever published. From 1923 to 1938, Steichen was a photographer for the Conde Nast, Vogue and Vanity Fair. During these years, Steichen was regarded as the best known and highest paid photographer in the world. In 1944, he directed the war documentary ‘The Fighting Lady’, which won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary. From 1947 to 1961, Steichen served as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Clementine Ogilvy Spencer Churchill, Baroness Spencer-Churchill, GBE (née Hozier 1885-1977) was married to Winston Churchill for 56 years from 1908. They had five children together and over the years she offered him much valuable advice. Moreover Winston would have been saved from many mistakes if he had listened to her more often: he would have been less resentful at losing cabinet office in 1915, backed off more quickly from a hard line on Ireland in 1921, trusted Baldwin's judgement during the abdication crisis in 1936, paid more heed to Attlee's complaints about his disorganized ways of handling the cabinet in the Second World War, and refrained from his ill-judged ‘Gestapo’ reference in the general election of 1945 to what a Labour government might do.
Sir Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) was born in Hampstead the son of Ernest Beaton, a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife Etty Sissons. Educated at St John's College, Cambridge, he set up a successful photography studio in London before moving to New York in 1928. He was hired by Vogue as contributing photographer in 1929. In 1937 he was appointed Royal Court photographer. During the Second World War Beaton was initially posted to the Ministry of Information and given the task of recording images from the home front. 1942 Beaton was loaned to the Air Ministry for three months to photograph the Middle East, and "The Near East" came out of this in 1943. In 1958 and 1964 he won Oscars for costume design and art direction for Gigi and for My Fair Lady, respectively.He was knighted in 1972.