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Articles
The Lion and the Mouse: Did Churchill Desecrate Rubens?
- By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
- | March 14, 2024
- Category: Churchill's Art Q & A
Q: Did Churchill Repaint the Mouse?
A biographer and historian writes: “I am writing a piece on favorite paintings and ask if you could verify this story: A famous Rubens painting at Chequers, country home of prime ministers, depicts a lion caught in a net and a mouse gnawing at the net to free him. Is it actually true that Churchill had the painting taken down (or alternately had a ladder put up) so he could retouch the mouse?”
A: Not established
The mouse touch-up, if it ever existed, is not visible in the Chequers painting. This one, however, is not the original. It is one of several copies made by the artists, Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders. Snyders was a noted animal painter who collaborated with the great artist. He also contributed the eagle to Rubens’ well-known painting, Prometheus Bound.
The original “Lion and Mouse” hangs at Château de Canisy, a French Heritage monument and hotel near Saint Lô in Normandy. In the original, displayed in the formal dining room, the mouse is clearly visible.
The legend that Churchill repainted Chequers’ mouse to make it more visible has been around for years. Prime Minister Harold Wilson wrote:
In the Great Hall of Chequers is a large painting of the Aesop fable in which a lion caught in the toils of a net is rescued by a mouse nibbling at the rope which binds the net to a tree, attributed to Rubens. Churchill, in the small hours, decided: “can’t see the mouse,” and immediately demanded that his paints, brushes and a ladder be produced. He painted in the mouse—though later Prime Ministers, telling the story to their visitors, still had some difficulty in “seeing the mouse.” It takes a confident and authoritative Prime Minister to decide to touch up a Rubens.
The sequel is a little unhappy. The fund-raising effort for Churchill College asked the Chequers trustees to agree to loaning the picture for three months to the Churchill exhibition in London. It was decided to clean the canvas of its centuries of varnish and stains. This was successfully accomplished, but of course Churchill’s adornment had been over the varnish, and his artistic effort went with the varnish.1
“Wilder shores of oral evidence”
Official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert recounted Wilson’s story (correctly representing the Churchill lisp: “can’t see the moush”). Sir Martin wasn’t sure it was true: “This story, charming though it is, and often retold, may be typical of (dare I say it?) the wilder shores of oral evidence. Churchill was surely too great an art lover to ‘touch up’ a Rubens.”2
We asked art historian Paul Rafferty, author of the outstanding documentary, Churchill Painting on the Riviera. Himself a painter, Mr. Rafferty says it was technically possible:
The mouse is indeed lost in the composition and a few choice, light strokes in paint would bring out the animal and cause minimal “damage” to the painting. Churchill would have known that his vandalism could easily be removed by a conservator in the future.
Another possibility, if true, is that he used tempera, a water soluble paint Willy Sax [WSC’s Swiss paint supplier] introduced him to. He would have also known this would cause absolutely no damage at all to the priceless painting. It would however look dramatic to his audience and cause a stir.3
Paul Rafferty reminds us that Churchill did temporarily “fix” another artist’s painting at Lake Como in 1945—though the artist was unknown. In “Painting à deux,” he explained how WSC, affronted by a drab painting in his villa, brought it to vivid life and beauty with sweeping dashes of color off his own palette. Even then, however, Churchill knew he was trespassing. His daughter wrote: “[W]e were all heart-broken when it was once more carried upstairs to have its face washed. It now hangs back on the wall, stagnant and gloomy as before.”4
What date?
We also don’t know when the alteration supposedly occurred. Churchill painted only once during the war (“The Tower of Katoubia Mosque” in 1943, presented to Roosevelt). He was unlikely to have brought paints and brushes to Chequers during his wartime visits. So it likely occurred during his second premiership, 1951-55. Yet none of our reliable postwar memoirists, like Jock Colville or Anthony Montague Browne, mention the incident.
Colville’s only mention of Rubens was in 1940. It does attest to the boss’s admiration for the artist: “The Jimmy Rothschilds came to lunch and Winston walked about with him afterwards expatiating on the beauty of the pictures. There is, in particular, a little Rubens in the dining-room about which Winston went into ecstasies.”5
Would so great an admirer dare to repaint part of a Rubens? We report, you decide.
Endnotes
1 Harold Wilson, A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977), 260.
2 Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey (London: HarperCollins, 1994), 260-61.
3 Paul Rafferty to the Churchill Project, 13 December 2023.
4 Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry (London: Deutsch, 1967), 98.
5 Colville Diary, Chequers, Sunday, 14 July 1940.
Further reading
Paul Rafferty, “Painting à deux: Churchill’s and Alexander’s Paintings on the Riviera,” 2020.
Richard M. Langworth: “Paul Rafferty on Churchill’s “Paintacious” Riviera,” 2021.
Katie Davenport, “Winston Churchill: A Passion for Painting—by Edwina Sandys,” 2018.
Churchill Project, “Churchill Painting at Eze-sur-Mer,” 2016.