The painting of the magnificent villa Churchill visited with Sir John Lavery was a new discovery, no one knew he’d ever been there.
This led me to find another painting of the garden of Villa Sylvia featuring an old pergola. It was the jetty tower with its distinctive gazebo on top that I eventually recognised, one of many Eureka moments. Churchill chose a more cropped view and focused on the villa. This pretty little cove lies just below the exquisite Villa Rothschild and I had painted this exact view before, though I had taken in a wider field of view. The painting at Villa Sylvia in Cap Ferrat titled “The Little Harbour, St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat” painted in 1921, is a good example. Even before this, I had found myself painting some of Churchill’s locations, though many of the views were not obvious. It was much more of an undertaking than I had ever imagined. I began to locate places where Churchill painted…įinding these locations through a combination of Google Earth, cartes postales anciennes and knowledge of the region turned out to be a huge challenge. Thus began my interest in Churchill’s paintings and a bond with David. He informed me it was not by Sir Winston as he never painted in watercolour. I took a photograph and sent it to David Coombs who is the authority on Churchill’s paintings. Long ago, in 2004, I came across a watercolour in an antique bookshop in Los Angeles. It became a voyage of discovery which took him to many of the most iconic locations of Provence and the Cote d’Azur and resulted in a gorgeous coffee table book, filled with photos and anecdotes. His focus was the South of France, where he lives, though his discoveries went beyond this region.
In 2015, artist Paul Rafferty began a project to find the locations of Sir Winston Churchill’s painting locations for a book.
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