Description

“HAPPY ARE THE PAINTERS”: FIRST EDITION OF WINSTON CHURCHILL’S PAINTING AS A PASTIME, INSCRIBED BY CHURCHILL IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION

CHURCHILL, Winston. Painting as a Pastime. London: Odhams, (1948). Octavo, original pale green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of Churchill’s reflections on painting, with 18 beautiful color reproductions of his work, inscribed: “Inscribed for Herbert L. Matthews by Winston S. Churchill, 1948.”

Includes Churchill’s thoughtful essays on the relevance and therapeutic value of painting. “Happy are the painters,” he writes, “for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost to the end, of the day.” Cohen 242.1.a. Woods A125. Langworth, 288-89. Matthews, a reporter for the New York Times, gained fame with his 1957 interview with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Cuba after Fulgencio Batista had publicly declared Castro to be dead. Pencil notations in text margins.

Book fine, light wear to extremities and shallow chipping to spine head of original dust jacket. A near-fine copy, scarce inscribed.