Lady Lavery taught Winston to paint – and starred on the Irish £100 note. By Mary Kenny
Fifty of Winston Churchill’s paintings are to be shown in an exhibition in 2026, at London’s Wallace Collection. I hope the accompanying catalogue for ‘Winston Churchill: The Painter’ will mention Winston’s art teacher, Hazel, Lady Lavery, who instructed him in artwork. This started during the First World War. Hazel (1880-1935) was an Irish-American beauty, married to the Belfast- born artist Sir John Lavery. She had trained as a painter herself, in Paris, and published a book of etchings. She not only gave Winston painting lessons, but also became a confidante. During the negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which established the Irish Free State, she was a significant political networker. She was madly in love with Michael Collins and donned widow’s weeds when he was killed by a lone sniper in the subsequent Civil War. The late Lady Soames told me she remembered, from her childhood, Hazel visiting the...
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