Sarah Churchill
Malibu Nights
1950s
Lithograph
Image: 15 1/2" x 18 1/2"
Sheet: 25" x 21 1/2"
Gift of Elena & Burton Glinn
Sarah Churchill was born October 7th, 1914 to Sir Winston Churchill and Clementine Hozier. She matured into an actress and dancer. In the light of the public eye with her father’s political legacy and her acting career, she was unfortunately perhaps best known for her public disorderly arrests while intoxicated.1
During the course of her life she worked as an artist mostly in prints. In the 1950s, Churchill produced several prints, while living in California. Later in the 1970s, Churchill commercially published a series of portraits of her father, Sir Winston Churchill in collaboration with Curtis Hooper, entitled "A Visual Philosophy of Sir Winston Churchill." The series was carefully constructed by Churchill to represent her father's great ambitions and character. In the series, most of the prints were based on famous photographs chosen by Sarah Churchill, while one was based on Churchill's own drawing of her father. Each print was given a quote by Sir Winston Churchill and signed by Sarah Churchill in pencil.2
Not much is known about her printed works outside of the collaborative series of prints of her father, including the lithograph in the collection of the College The print could be linked to her time spent in Malibu California during the 1950s when she was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.
Malibu Nights is a loosely abstracted lithograph featuring an architectural form in the left foreground amidst a receding body of water and the treeline.The whole piece is rendered in a palette of dark navy, teal, gray, green, yellow, white and black. In the midground of the work is the large, navy blue organic shape that appears to be a body of water. The edges in the middle ground appear softly jagged - akin to dripping water. In the surrounding left edge of this body of water appears loose green streaks that feather out in such a way that it evokes the idea of a tree line. In the foregournd and left side of the print, the architectural form is composed of contrasting straight lines to create sharp angles.
At the bottom of Malibu Nights is the inscription ‘for Elena’. No one in Churchill’s immediate family was named Elena. Therefore, it is unclear for whom this print was supposed to be given.
1. "Sarah Churchill Dead in London; Daughter of Sir Winston Was 67," The New York Times (New York, NY), September 25, 1982, December 15, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/25/obituaries/sarah-churchill-dead-in-london-daughter-of-sir-winston-was-67.html. ↩
2. Richard Langworth, "Sarah Churchill-Curtis Hooper Prints," Richard M. Langworth, last modified March 7, 2009, December 15, 2016, https://richardlangworth.com/sarah-hooper. ↩
-Amanda Page