Winston Churchill was a regular visitor to Monte Carlo, which he appreciated for its pleasant features and landscapes, ideal sources of inspiration for the statesman who also happened to be an amateur painter. The former British Prime Minister was a frequent guest of Prince Rainier III on his numero...
Winston Churchill was a regular visitor to Monte Carlo, which he appreciated for its pleasant features and landscapes, ideal sources of inspiration for the statesman who also happened to be an amateur painter. The former British Prime Minister was a frequent guest of Prince Rainier III on his numerous trips to the Mediterranean coast. He divided his time between Monaco, where the Hôtel de Paris was a favourite haunt, and Cap d’Ail, where he stayed with his friend Lord Beaverbrook. At the request of the British community, the Monegasque Government commissioned this bust, which sits in the square that bears his name. The work was officially unveiled on 19 May 1969 by Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace, in the presence of the British Ambassador to Monaco, Mrs Soames, daughter of Winston Churchill. This sculpture is one of many busts made by Nemon of the British statesman, with whom he first made acquaintance in Marrakech, in 1951. The two men shared a long friendship. This massive, highly realistic bust presents Churchill in the strength of his later years, his countenance serious, expressing the patriotic values that he espoused throughout his life, and which are inscribed on the pedestal in both English and French: In war : Resolution, In defeat : Defiance, In victory : Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwilll.
Oscar Nemon was a Yugoslavian sculptor who settled in Britain. He was born in 1906 in Osijek, Croatia, and died in April 1985 in Oxford, England. Self-taught, he created his first sculptures in Vienna before enrolling at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1925. In the 1930s, he produced numerous busts of Viennese and Belgian personalities, including King Albert I of Belgium and Sigmund Freud. In 1940, he sought refuge in England, where throughout his career, he sculpted statues and busts of political figures: the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery, Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian Socialist MP Émile Vandervelde, Queen Elizabeth II, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
