4066

Randolph Spencer Churchill 1932

Half-length to the left in three-quarter profile, wearing a dark jacket and cream shirt, with a red rose in his lapel

Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 53.4 cm (28 x 21 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1932 July   

Laib L17511(151) / C5 (12A)  

NPG Album 1932, p. 9

Sitters’ Book II, f. 73: Randolph S. Churchill July 15th 1932.

Private Collection

This portrait of the twenty-one year old Randolf Churchill was commissioned as a gift for his father, Sir Winston Churchill, by de László’s important patron Viscount Rothermere [4759]. Later, Alan Brien wrote of his first meeting with the sitter: ‘He was standing under the De Laszlo [sic] portrait of himself as a golden boy. The contrast was startling – as if Dorian Gray had changed places with his picture for one day of the year. “Yes,” he said good-humouredly, “it is hard to believe that was me, isn’t it? I was a joli garçon in those days.”’^[1] Sir Winston’s long-serving private secretary, John Colville, also remembered the portrait: “László painted him in his youth: the intelligent grey eyes, the light hair brushed back, the splendid bone structure of his face portray a young man destined, it seemed, to make a notable mark in the life of his country.”^[2] 

The Honourable Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer Churchill was born 28 May 1911, in Mayfair, London, son of the Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) and his wife Clementine Hozier (1885-1977). Educated at Eton, he then spent four terms at Christ Church, Oxford, where, as a confident writer and public speaker, he decided to start a career as a journalist. From an early age, he was well-known for his enthusiastic consumption of whisky and cigarettes, a habit he kept throughout his life. In 1935, without consulting his father, he stood at a by-election as an independent Conservative in Liverpool Wavertree, marking his opposition to the India Bill. This resulted in the split of the party vote in favour of Labour. He stood again as an official candidate in the general election the same year, for the West Toxteth division of Liverpool, but lost, as he did the following year at a by-election in Ross & Cromarty, to his father’s embarrassment. He was eventually elected for Preston in 1940 but failed to be returned to that seat.

From 1941 he served in the Middle East, attaining the rank of Major on the General Staff (Intelligence) at general headquarters in the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars. He also served in the Western Desert, North Africa, Italy, and Yugoslavia as a member of the Maclean Mission.

After the war he resumed his career as a journalist and broadcaster and also worked as a lecturer. His ambition was to write his father’s biography and, after he completed the biographies of Sir Anthony Eden (1959) and E. G. V. Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby (1960), he was granted permission to do so by the trustees of his father’s papers. The first volume Youth, 1874-1900 was published in 1966 and The Young Statesman, 1901-1914, was published the following year. Five volumes followed (1967-9). His premature death prevented him from completing the six further volumes and these were completed by Martin Gilbert. The Kennedy family had also invited him to write the official biography of President John F. Kennedy, but this project was not to be. The sitter’s own biography, Twenty-One Years was published in 1965.

Randolph Churchill married the Honourable Pamela Digby, daughter of the 11th Baron Digby, on 4 October 1939. There was one son of the marriage, Winston (born 1940), before it was dissolved in 1946. He married secondly, 2 November 1948, June Osborne, daughter of Colonel Rex Hamilton Osborne, with whom he had a daughter, Arabella (born 1949). That marriage was dissolved in 1961.

Randolph Churchill died of a heart attack aged fifty-seven on 6 June 1968. He is buried at St Martin’s Church, Bladon, Oxfordshire, near the grave of his father and mother and other members of the Spencer Churchill family.

PROVENANCE:  
Sir Winston Churchill

EXHIBITED:

•Victoria Art Galleries, Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., Dundee, September 1932, no. 41

•M. Knoedler & Co., London, Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June-July, 1933, no. 7

LITERATURE:  

•Nottingham Journal, 22 June 1933

•The Lady, 29 June 1933

•Colville, John, The Churchillians, London, 1981, p. 22

•Churchill, Randolph S., Twenty-One Years, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965, ill. front cover (including frame)

•Churchill, Winston S., His Father’s Son: The Life of Randolph Churchill, Orion, 1996, ill. front cover

•Barber, Michael, The Captain: The Life and Times of Simon Raven, Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, London, 2001, p. 181

KF 2019