1887-1979
French artist
1. Introduction
Maze (pronounced ‘Mars’) is often described as the last of the post-impressionist artists, known for his quintessentially British scenes. Born in France, he attended secondary school in England and was naturalised as a UK citizen in 1920. He and Churchill first met on the Western Front in 1916 and became painting companions in the 1930s to 1950s. Maze served in both World Wars and was decorated by both Britain and France. He was an official artist for the coronation of Elizabeth II. He lived in West Sussex and died at the age of 92.
2. Stories
- Maze completed his schooling in Southampton and served with the British in both World Wars.
- Maze and Churchill first met on a road on the Western Front in 1916.
- Maze was almost shot as a suspected spy by the British during World War I after being separated from his unit.
- Maze enjoyed spending time in the 1930s with his artist friends and Churchill at the chateau of Consuelo Balsan, formerly Consuelo Spencer-Churchill.
- Paul Maze and his son Étienne both worked on ‘Bomber’ Harris’s staff during World War II.
- Clementine instigated the destruction of a Paul Maze sketch of Winston, owned by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- Maze’s granddaughter Jeanne continues the Maze-Churchill relationship.
Maze completed his schooling in Southampton and served with the British in both World Wars.
His father was a wealthy commodities merchant in Le Havre who collected art and had many artist friends including Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Raoul Dufy. Paul learned some of his art techniques from them and visited Monet at his property at Giverny. He was sent to school in Southampton at age 12 to improve his English, then worked in his father’s business in Hamburg and Liverpool for around 10 years.
Although a French army conscript, he managed to attach himself as an interpreter to the UK’s Royal Scots Greys. He used his drawing ability to produce sketches of enemy positions, often advancing to dangerous locations on the front line on his motorbike. He was wounded three times, gaining British and French decorations for his service.
After the war he remained in France and was part of an artists’ group known as the School of Paris, using modern styles. He was particularly influenced by Édouard Vuillard’s use of pastels. In 1921 he married Margaret Nelson, an English widow, and moved to London, having become a British citizen in 1920. He produced paintings of Ascot and Goodwood horserace meetings, the Henley regatta, sailing at Cowes, military events and other British scenes. He exhibited widely in galleries in the UK, USA and France.
During World War II, he served in the Home Guard and then as a staff officer in the RAF. In 1948 he competed for Britain in one of the painting events in the London Summer Olympics but did not win a medal (Olympic art competitions also included architecture, literature, music and sculpture; entries had to have a sport-related theme).
Maze divorced in 1949 and married Jessie Lawrie, a Scot, in 1950 who became one of his main subjects, usually in pastel. They settled in a cottage in Treyford, West Sussex, with views over the South Downs. He continued drawing, painting and exhibiting, depicting the funeral of King George VI and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the latter as an officially appointed artist, together with Feliks Topolski, Terence Cuneo, Herbert James Gunn and L.S. Lowry.
Maze and Churchill first met on a road on the Western Front in 1916.
Maze became one of Churchill’s closest French friends. Their first encounter was when Churchill was commanding the 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers in Belgium, and was striding along a road. Maze was immediately struck by his distinctive, purposeful walk, despite exhaustion.
They established an initial connection but it was not until after Maze asked Churchill to write a foreword for his memoirs A Frenchman in Khaki (1934) that they became good friends. Churchill admired his artistic skills, World War I bravery and anti-appeasement stance against Nazism. In the foreword, Churchill said that the book contained ‘the battle-scenes of Armageddon recorded by one who not only loved the fighting troops and shared their perils, but perceived the beauties of light and shade, of form and colour, of which even the horrors of war cannot rob the progress of the sun.’1
Churchill also wrote a piece in 1939 for the catalogue for Maze’s first exhibition in New York, saying, ‘With the fewest of strokes he can create an impression at once true and beautiful. Here is no toiling seeker after preconceived effects, but a vivid and powerful interpreter to us of the forces and harmony of Nature.’2
Maze visited Chartwell a number of times in the 1930s. Churchill enjoyed his buccaneer spirit but Clementine was not so keen and the visits were replaced by correspondence and meetings during Winston’s trips to France instead. Although often described as an artistic mentor to Churchill, Maze said self-deprecatingly that he did not teach Churchill anything, but that instead they painted next to each other. Churchill referred to him as ‘a companion of the brush’.*3 Churchill would sometimes declare to Maze that he had got himself into a mess and Maze would help him out, saying, ‘My dear Winston, the old fault: you’re committing your forces far too quickly.’4
He said that Churchill could visualise his picture before he started it but did not always have the means to finish it. He saw these difficulties as a side effect of Churchill’s vision, enthusiasm and love for life, encouraging him to paint in his natural manner, but with less energy.
* The phrase ‘companion of the brush’ was a play on titles such as ‘Companion of the Bath’ and ‘Companion of the Order of the Garter’.
Maze was almost shot as a suspected spy by the British during World War I after being separated from his unit.
In September 1914, Maze was retreating from Mons with the Royal Scots Greys when he became inadvertently separated from them and was found by an English company. Although his English was excellent, he still had a French accent, no paperwork and an unusual uniform, so suspicions were raised. A decision was made that he was a spy and that he should be executed. He was being taken off to the firing squad when an officer riding by recognised him and shouted, ‘Hello, Paul, what are you doing there?’ ‘I am about to be shot’, he replied.5 The officer intervened and Paul’s life was saved.
Shortly afterwards, a German deserter was found by the British in civilian clothes near the Belgian border. He too was suspected of being a spy and was ordered by headquarters to be shot. After Maze was instructed to deliver the news to the prisoner, he pleaded with his commanding officer, Major-General Hubert Gough, that the German was a deserter, not a spy, but Gough refused to countermand the order. Maze had just taken possession of the German’s effects and his last letters to his mother and girlfriend when he heard Gough’s car starting up outside. He ran out and stuck his head through the car window, pleading once more, just as the firing squad was arriving. This time Gough responded, ‘Well, do what you like with him’,6 and the execution was called off.
Maze was detained again, during World War II. After the invasion of France, he travelled by boat with two family members and other refugees from Bordeaux and landed in the UK. They were all placed in custody but after Maze contacted Duff Cooper, minister of information, his family were permitted to be freed. Maze, however, refused the offer while the other refugees were still in custody. He managed to get through to Churchill by telephone who ensured that the whole group was released.
Maze enjoyed spending time in the 1930s with his artist friends and Churchill at the chateau of Consuelo Balsan, formerly Consuelo Spencer-Churchill.
Consuelo Vanderbilt, from the wealthy American Vanderbilt family, married Charles ‘Sunny’ Spencer-Churchill, Churchill’s cousin, but they divorced in 1921. She then married aviator Jacques Balsan, brother of Coco Chanel’s lover and benefactor Étienne, and lived in Château Saint-Georges-Motel around 50 miles (80 km) west of Paris. The Balsans hosted various friends, artists, musicians and writers on their estate, including Maze as a regular visitor.
Winston and Clementine were staying there one weekend in the 1930s, during which Winston was painting a canal scene. He was approached by Maze and fellow artists André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Simon Lévy and Jean Marchand. Churchill promptly handed out paintbrushes with the instructions, ‘You, Paul, shall paint the trees – you, Segonzac, the sky – you, Simon Lévy, the water and you, Marchand, the foreground, and I shall supervise.’ Puffing on his cigar, he intervened from time to time: ‘a little more blue here in your sky, Segonzac – your water more shadowed, Lévy – and, Paul, your foliage a deeper green just there.’7 All five signed the painting.
The same weekend Churchill decided to do a painting of the moat but the water was too calm for his liking. He summoned a photographer from nearby Dreux while two gardeners sat in a boat and stirred the water up with their paddles. After taking photos from various angles, the photographer was heard muttering in French, ‘These English are all maniacs.’8
While staying at the chateau in 1939, Churchill and Maze were painting next to each other when a telegram about the war was handed to Churchill, saying, ‘Situation worsening. Advice: come home. You might have a job.’ Maze stopped painting immediately, but Churchill continued, then turned and said to Maze, ‘You will finish that painting. You won’t do another one for another four years.’9 He added, ‘This is the last picture we shall paint in peace for a very long time.’10 Within two weeks, war was declared. Churchill did not produce another painting for six years, with one exception in Marrakech after a conference in Casablanca in 1943, which he gave to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Paul Maze and his son Étienne both worked on ‘Bomber’ Harris’s staff during World War II.
Étienne had a solidly English education at Stowe school and Oxford University, then undertook flying training in the USA. There he joined 76 Squadron, a bomber unit, and immediately realised that the training could not prepare pilots well for real wartime conditions, but he learned quickly nevertheless. He was six feet six inches tall (1.98 m) which caused him severe discomfort in his cramped Halifax aircraft cockpit until he arranged for a replacement seat. The aircraft was borrowed by another pilot who crashed it on take-off and Étienne reverted to his discomfort. In the RAF he went by the name ‘Johnny’ or the nickname ‘Feets’, because of his large feet.
Unlike many of his squadron members, Étienne survived his tour, although on two occasions he almost did not make it back. During a sortie to Milan, part of his flight controls were hit during a fighter attack and he only just managed to keep the aircraft in the air before making an emergency landing in West Sussex. On another occasion he had an engine fire over Munich. Some of the crew wanted to bail out but they were persuaded to stay on board and all returned safely. He received a Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts.
He was then assigned as Aide de Camp to Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, head of RAF Bomber Command, taking part in his survey team. Through this connection, his father Paul was transferred from the Home Guard in Hampshire to Harris’s group as a staff officer with the task of assessing the psychological impact of Allied bombing in German-occupied areas.
Harris and Paul became good friends and spent much time together after the war. Maze would often stay with Harris, particularly during the Henley Royal Regatta. Harris had his own boat and was a member of the Steward’s Enclosure, from which his guest Maze would sketch the views. In later life Maze became more and more reluctant to leave his West Sussex home but would correspond extensively with Harris about the wartime and about Britain’s declining post-war influence.
Clementine instigated the destruction of a Paul Maze sketch of Winston, owned by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Churchills attended a conference in Quebec, Canada, in September 1944 and then spent some time with the Roosevelts at their Hyde Park home in New York state. Roosevelt’s private art collection was kept in the President’s Museum in New York. According to the catalogue, one of the items was ‘A charcoal sketch of Winston Churchill playing cards. Inscription on nameplate reads: “This sketch by W.S.C’s painting teacher was given to F.D.R. by Lord Beaverbrook June 1943.”’11 There are other Maze sketches with this theme but there is no pictorial record of the version that Clementine saw and disliked intensely. In a letter home, Clementine described it as a ‘horrible caricature’ and confided that ‘I boldly told the President I did not like it and he said “Nor do I.” So I said “May it come out?” and he said “Yes,” and so now it is destroyed.’12 At the time, Roosevelt had the right to do with it as he wished, as a private gift. After his death, the contents of the collection passed from his personal ownership to the museum.
A more significant portrait that Clementine and Winston strongly disliked was by Graham Sutherland, paid for by both Houses of Parliament and presented to Churchill in his personal capacity on his eightieth birthday, together with a decorative book with the signatures of nearly every parliamentarian. After seeing a photo of the portrait shortly before the ceremony, Churchill tried to have it excluded, but the presentation went ahead to avoid offending donors who had provided a total of 1,000 guineas (£1,050, equivalent to £29,000 today). In his acceptance speech, he referred to it ambiguously as a ‘remarkable example of modern art’,13 raising a laugh.
The painting was hidden at Chartwell and later taken away by the brother of Grace Hamblin, the Churchills’ administrator, and burned. Eventually it became known that the portrait had been destroyed, which Sutherland described as an ‘act of vandalism’.14
Maze’s granddaughter Jeanne continues the Maze-Churchill relationship.
Maze and Churchill continued to meet after the war including on the French Riviera while Churchill was staying with Emery Reves. Maze spent his last years in his Sussex home with Jessie, three King Charles spaniels and two cats. He died aged 92 with a pastel in his hand.
Maze’s son Étienne had a daughter called Jeanne who married Robert Spencer-Churchill in 1979. Robert is the only child of Ivor Spencer-Churchill and a grandson of Sunny and Consuelo Spencer-Churchill. Consuelo is credited with coining the phrase ‘an heir and a spare’ after producing John (later 10th Duke of Marlborough) and Ivor in 1897 and 1898. If John had died before Ivor (highly possible during World War I), Robert and Jeanne would now be the duke and duchess of Marlborough.
They met at a function after an exhibition celebrating Paul Maze’s ninetieth birthday. Robert commissioned her to paint some murals in his dining room and when she visited his house she was surprised to see many paintings by Maze, who had used a stable belonging to Robert’s father as a studio. They married two years later.
As a young aspiring artist, Jeanne painted some Chinese-style murals on her bedroom wall in her parent’s home and showed them to her grandfather. She was highly anxious about Maze’s two-minute silence as he studied them. Finally he said, ‘You will be a painter, but you have a lot to discover’,15 a source of huge relief and confidence for her.
She decided to go to art school and said, ‘My grand-father was furious! He was so disappointed, he said “You would learn more spending a day in the studio of a painter that you admire than a year at an art school.” But I went anyway.’16
Maze’s reaction reflected his approach with Churchill whom he felt was sometimes too much under the influence of others, advising him instead to paint in the same way that he wrote or spoke. To his granddaughter he said, ‘Copying is a disease you should avoid at all costs’,17 despite being a learning technique recommended by some of Churchill’s other art mentors. Maze felt that painters are born, not made. Nevertheless, Jeanne and Churchill both found merit in some schooling, partly fulfilling Maze’s advice to disregard advice (his own).
3. Biographical summary
| Occupation | Artist (painting, drawing, pastels) |
| Country | France, UK (naturalised 1920) |
| Career | Worked in his father’s commodities company in Hamburg and Liverpool (c.1904-14). Interpreter for the Royal Scots Greys then reconnaissance (1914-18). Artist in Paris (1918-21) then London (from 1921). Exhibited in Britain, the US and France (first New York exhibition 1939). Home Guard then staff officer for Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris (1939-45). Competed in art event in Olympics, London (1948). Painted George VI’s funeral (1952) and Elizabeth II’s coronation (1953). |
| Born | 1887 in Le Havre, France (13 years younger than Churchill) |
| Father | George Maze (b.1866), commodities merchant and art collector |
| Mother | |
| Siblings | Elder of two children: 1. Paul Lucien (1887-1979) 2. Jeanne |
| Education | Primary school in France; secondary school in Southampton, England |
| Spouse | 1. Margaret Balfour (1881-1967), m. 1921, div. 1949; widow of wartime friend Captain Thomas Nelson 2. Jessie Lawrie; m. 1950 until Maze’s death in 1979 |
| Relationships | |
| Children | By Margaret Balfour: 1. Pauline (1920-64) 2. Étienne (1922-89), born in Argyllshire; daughter Jeanne married Robert Spencer-Churchill, grandson of Sir Winston’s cousin Charles ‘Sunny’, 9th Duke of Marlborough, in 1979 Also six step-children from Margaret Balfour’s first marriage |
| Died | 1979 at home in Treyford, West Sussex, aged 92 (14 years after Churchill) |
| Buried | |
| Chartwell | Various |
| Other Club | – |
| Nickname | The last of the post-impressionists |
4. See also
Churchill and painting
Other artists
Churchill’s French connections
- Chanel, Coco (French fashion designer)
- De Gaulle, Charles (French soldier and politician)
- Edward VIII (exiled in France)
- Elliott, Maxine (American actress living on the Riviera)
- Petain, Philippe
- Pol-Roger, Odette (champagne company executive)
5. Further reading
Paul Maze
- Maze, Paul, A Frenchman in Khaki (Heinemann, 1934) (foreword by Churchill)
- Singer, Anne, Paul Maze, the Lost Impressionist [sic] (Aurum Press, 1983) (foreword by Paul Maze)
Maze and Churchill
- British Pathé, ‘The Other World Of Winston Churchill’, British Pathé, 1964 (documentary on Churchill’s painting, including interviews with Paul Maze [reels 2 and 4], Bernard Montgomery, Merle Oberon, etc.)
Churchill and painting
- Cannadine, David, Churchill: The Statesman as Artist (Bloomsbury, 2018)
- Churchill, Winston S., Painting as a Pastime (Unicorn Press, 2013); also found in collected works, e.g. Churchill, Winston, Thoughts and Adventures, ed. by James W. Muller (Thornton Butterworth, 1932)
- Coombs, David and Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston Churchill: His Life and His Paintings (Unicorn, 2013)
- Rafferty, P., Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2020)
- Soames, Mary, Winston Churchill: His Life as a Painter (HarperCollins, 1990)
Miscellaneous
- British Pathé, ‘Westminster’s Day of Majesty’, YouTube: British Pathé Channel, 1954 (Acceptance speech for Sutherland portrait)
- Jackson, Penelope, Females in the Frame: Women, Art, and Crime (Springer International Publishing, 2019) (includes Clementine’s destruction of three artworks)
- National Trust, ‘Collection highlights at Chartwell’, National Trust (includes ‘House of Commons 80th birthday book’)
- Thuillier, Rosalind, Graham Sutherland: Life, Work and Ideas (Lutterworth Press, 2015)
- Vanderbilt Balsan, Consuelo, The Glitter and the Gold (Hodder and Stoughton, 2011)
See also ‘Further reading’ for Walter Sickert.
6. References
1. Paul Maze, A Frenchman in Khaki (Heinemann, 1934), Introduction.
2. Acquavella Galleries, Paintings by Paul Maze, November 18-December 17, 1964 (Acquavella Galleries, 1964). The 1964 catalogue quotes from the 1939 catalogue.
3. Mary Soames, A Daughter’s Tale: The Memoir of Winston and Clementine Churchill’s Youngest Child (Random House, 2011), p. 105.
4. BBC, ‘Churchill, The Man I Knew’, BBC Archive, 1974. Radio programme. From 23:25 to 28:20.
5. Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold (Harper, 1952), p. 285.
6. Maze, pp. 78–79.
7. Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold, p. 286.
8. Ibid.
9. British Pathé, ‘The Other World of Winston Churchill Reel 4’, British Pathé, 1964. From 2:10.
10. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill. Companion Volume 5, Pt 3 (Houghton Mifflin, 1977), p. 1591.
11. Penelope Jackson, Females in the Frame: Women, Art, and Crime (Springer International Publishing, 2019), p. 18.
12. Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage (Houghton Mifflin, 1979), p. 665.
13. British Pathé, ‘Westminster’s Day of Majesty’, YouTube: British Pathé Channel, 1954.
14. BBC, ‘Winston Churchill Turns 80’, BBC, 1954.
15. Jeanne Maze, ‘An Interview with Olivier Lebleu’, Jeanne Maze.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.