Portrait photographique signé, dédicacé par Churchill
Original print, signed by the photographer in the lower left corner, in ink.
Trusted secretary to Prime Minister Clement Attlee in early 1951, Oates became Winston Churchill’s secretary after Churchill’s election victory that October, retaining the post throughout Churchill’s term and becoming close to the Churchill couple, as numerous letters attest.
The inscription is dated 1954, one year before Churchill ceded the office of Prime Minister to Anthony Eden.
Florence Vivienne Entwistle began in photography in 1934, assisting her husband Ernest Entwistle and their son Antony. She opened her own studio in the late 1930s and specialized in portraits of public figures. Her relationship with the Churchills went beyond the professional: in October 1949, the Churchills’ daughter Sarah married Vivienne’s son, Antony. The Churchills “learned of the marriage… from the newspapers and were greatly upset by it… especially Clementine, who took it very badly.” Nevertheless, on 19 December 1949, the Churchills met the Viviennes, and “after an agreeable lunch together, Florence Vivienne made the portrait of Winston Churchill in her Piccadilly studio” (Gilbert, Vol. VIII, p. 496). Churchill liked the portrait so much that he used it the following year for the February 1950 general election campaign, and it became one of the Prime Minister’s most famous images. Florence Vivienne was known for requiring her subjects to come to her studio, and the dust jacket of her autobiography (They Came to My Studio, published in 1956) is illustrated with this photograph. Vivienne recalled (p. 16) how iconic the image had become, noting that it was at the time the only photograph she had taken of Churchill.
As the relationship with the Churchills became a family one, Vivienne “may be the only photographer to have had the privilege of photographing the whole family” in a private setting, making Clementine’s portrait a few weeks later. The National Portrait Gallery holds 214 portraits by Vivienne, including this one, incorrectly dated 1951, of which 14 are of the Churchill family, most taken at their country home, Chartwell.