Sir Winston Churchill by Oscar Nemon
Bronze bust
1965
Donated by the European Movement
With: François Kersaudy, historian, expert on Winston Churchill
Sound archives (in order of appearance): Winston Churchill, Oscar Nemon, Édouard Bonnefous and Antoine Capet
Authors: Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger, Anne Kropotkine
To find out more:
Antoine Capet, Churchill, le dictionnaire, Tempus, 2019
François Kersaudy, Winston Churchill : le pouvoir de l’imagination, Tallandier, 2009, re-edited. 2015
Transcription
Opening titles: L'Atelier de l'Europe, discovering the Council of Europe’s art collection.
Sir Winston Churchill by Oscar Nemon. Bronze bust, donated by the European Movement, located in the second-floor gallery of the Palais de l'Europe. With François Kersaudy and, from the archives of the Ina, Winston Churchill, Oscar Nemon, Édouard Bonnefous and Antoine Capet.
François Kersaudy: It has to be said, Churchill was quite conscious of his appearance; he set great store by the way he was portrayed. In other words, his expression had to look combative. In this case, he’s looking more indulgent. There’s almost the slightest hint of a smile. His pose is both relaxed and good-natured, you might say. There’s no aggressiveness. That must be a reflection of how Churchill felt about the artist. They had been great friends since meeting in Marrakech at the end of 1950.
Sound archive: Oscar Nemon studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. The busts he sculpted included King Albert, Émile Vandervelde, August Vermeylen and, during the war, Paul-Henri Spaak. Oscar Nemon, whose pointed features are reminiscent of a portrait by El Greco, also sculpted the bust of Churchill. They were close friends.
François Kersaudy: Oscar Nemon had gifted Churchill’s wife with a small bust he had improvised on the spot. And he had become a friend of the family. So when Queen Elizabeth wanted a bust of Churchill to put next to the bust of Marlborough at Windsor castle, the Churchill family insisted that it was Nemon who sculpted it.
Sound archive - Oscar Nemon: In the year of her coronation, the Queen wanted a bust to be made of Sir Winston. And I was chosen to do it. I produced a drawing of him and, later on, a statue which is on display at the Guildhall.
Sound archive: Knowing him as well as you did, what was Winston Churchill’s dominant trait?
Sound archive - Oscar Nemon: Sir Winston Churchill’s dominant trait was defiance.
Sound archive: Refusing to bow down.
Sound archive - Oscar Nemon: Yes, that’s right.
François Kersaudy: Churchill was very impatient, and sitting doing nothing was the thing he hated most of all. He was only happy if he was doing something. So during one of the sittings he started sculpting a bust of Nemon.
Sound archive - Oscar Nemon: He saw it as a challenge. So much so that he said: "Well, I’m going to do your sculpture too, while you do mine". And that’s how the only sculpture he ever produced came into existence. It was my head. He was already elderly and never tried to develop his skills any further.
François Kersaudy: And that bust is still in Churchill’s studio in Chartwell. It’s on display.
Sound archive - Oscar Nemon: He had a tremendous curiosity for everything in the sphere of culture, and he was a profoundly civilised man. He worshipped civilisation.
Sound archive - Édouard Bonnefous: Churchill was a giant. He was a giant because, firstly, he won that war. Without his implacable determination, the war would never have been won. And he was a giant in terms of his speaking skills too. If you have heard a speech by Churchill, then you’ve heard the most brilliant orator of the English-speaking world. And in his famous Zurich address, he launched the idea that Europe had to be recreated in partnership with the new Germany.
Sound archive - Antoine Capet: In his Zurich address of 1946, he dropped a bombshell. He was a great showman and loved slipping a bombshell into every speech. "I'm now going to say something that will astonish you".
Sound archive - Winston Churchill: I'm now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step of the recreation of the European family must be a partnership…
Sound archive - Antoine Capet: "The first step in the re-creation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany".
Sound archive - Winston Churchill: …between France and Germany.
François Kersaudy: A "partnership" that could serve as the basis and foundation of a broader movement.
Sound archive - Winston Churchill: We must build a kind of United States of Europe.
François Kersaudy: A "United States of Europe". Obviously, that sparked tremendous enthusiasm. But what he also said was that Great Britain, the Commonwealth and America would act as sponsors of this new Europe. In other words, they wouldn’t be in it.
Sound archive - Winston Churchill: And the first practical step would be to form a Council of Europe.
François Kersaudy: In calling it a “Council of Europe”, Churchill was suggesting that it would not be binding but consultative, advisory. It did not involve giving up sovereignty. Put simply, it was a body in which efforts would be concerted. And the British were fully in favour of that – all the more so as, at the time the Council of Europe was launched, concerted efforts were needed because Churchill’s chief concern at the time was standing up to the Soviet Union.
Sound archive - Winston Churchill: Men will be proud to say: "I am a European".
François Kersaudy: Churchill was the big name of the day. Between ‘47 and ‘49, who else was there? Who better than Churchill? There was no one. He had just toured the whole of Europe. He had been deluged with honorary degrees from just about every university you could possibly imagine. And it was no accident that the Council of Europe Statute was signed in London. For the inauguration in Strasbourg, he was the one who headed the UK delegation. It was perfectly logical.
Sound archive - Winston Churchill: Mr Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, beware. I am going to speak French.
François Kersaudy: He was making all these speeches and the fact that he was doing some in French too went down really well. There were a lot of anglicisms mixed up in his French for comic effect, it has to be said, and people loved it.
Sound archive – Winston Churchill: It is not against a race. It is not against any one nation that we are gathering our forces. It is against tyranny in all its forms, both ancient and modern that we are resolutely taking a stand.
François Kersaudy: With Churchill, we can see a devotion to upholding human rights, but it is not so much about individuals. It is about the rights of citizens of a country, they must be protected from persecution and tyranny. It is about the right to live in a democratic country, in a free country where there is no police repression. The Nazi system that had just been beaten and the Bolshevik Soviet system he had fought against for much of his life had clearly left a lasting impression.
Closing credits: That was Sir Winston Churchill by Oscar Nemon, a Council of Europe podcast, created by Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger and Anne Kropotkine, with the historian François Kersaudy and, from the archives of the INA, the voices of Winston Churchill, Oscar Nemon, Édouard Bonnefous and Antoine Capet. Other episodes are available on the Council of Europe website.
