Afternoon visit to Chartwell

During my business trip to Europe, I had the chance to visit my family in the UK and on one afternoon Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill. The visit to Chartwell included a walk around the grounds, his art studio and house. Winston painted many scenes of his estate (not really to my taste) and there are strategic chairs placed in positions from which he may have painted – you can just imagine him having his paints brought to him along with an ample supply of tea, sandwiches and cigars! I sat in one of the chairs to have my photo taken and in that time made an extremely quick sketch.

The most interesting part of the visit were the grounds and scenery – the views are stunning and unspoilt by road, rail, buildings etc – from the estate you cannot see anything but green countryside.

For anyone on Part 3 Expanse a visit to Chartwell has a wealth of material: varied landscape, woodland and beautifully manicured ‘English’ country garden borders. For those who need trees this estate is a treasure trove.

I will use some of these images to complement local trees near my home in Chile.

At the end of the tour in the House, there was a wonderful portrait of Churchill and his wife by William Nicholson (1872-1949) entitled:

Study for ‘Breakfast at Chartwell II’ (Sir Winston Churchill, 1874–1965, and Clementine Ogilvy Hozier, 1885–1977, Lady Churchill, in the Dining Room at Chartwell, with Their Cat ‘Tango’) c.1932/1933

Link to image: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/interview-with-chartwells-cat-jock-vi

I liked the informal nature of the study and all the ‘normal’ items on the table (except the cat of course!) – Churchill is almost a siluette but unmistakenly him.

In the link you can also see a couple of his paintings.