Picture Winston Churchill’s attire, and a three-piece suit (with bow tie) likely comes to mind. But away from the public eye, the British leader often slipped into more practical garb to paint: white cotton overalls. Naturally, these weren’t off-the-rack, but rather, carefully made by his Savile Row tailors.

One such set of overalls, wrinkled and lightly paint spattered, is now on display at Chartwell, Churchill’s longtime home in Kent, southeast England, where he built a studio for himself in the 1930s. Yes, it was a logical way of protecting his clothes, Chartwell’s curator Katherine Carter noted, but putting on the overalls was also part of a personal process.

Winston Churchill painting during a holiday in the France in 1933. Photo: courtesy TopPhoto/Chartwell.

“Art became his antidote to pressure and frustration,” Carter said. “An item like this brings us closer to those quiet creative moments away from the world.” To complete the picture, Chartwell is also showing a pair of Churchill’s steel-framed spectacles.

Churchill’s painting glasses and paints. Photo: courtesy National Trust/Kate York.

Another item in “Churchill the Artist” that is being displayed in the U.K. for the first time is the painting Quiet Waters (c. 1920s). It depicts a dim scene of a slow-moving river in mauve and deep green. It was an 80th birthday gift from Churchill in 1959 to his friend Max Aitken, better-known as Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian-born press baron who wielded considerable influence over British politics for decades.

Installation view of “Churchill the Artist”. Photo: courtesy National Trust/Kate York.

Gloomier and more impressionist than much of Churchill’s work, Quiet Waters is on loan from the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation and represents something of a reciprocal gift. Five years earlier, Lord Beaverbrook had recommended that the British government commission Graham Sutherland to paint a portrait of Churchill for his 80th birthday. The two-time Prime Minister despised the work—describing it as “a remarkable example of modern art”—and ordered it to be destroyed. Today, some of Sutherland’s preliminary sketches are housed in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, Canada.

Print of “A Summer Evening at Cliveden” by Alfred Munnings. Photo: courtesy National Trust.

Nearby, there’s a print of Alfred Munnings‘s painting A Summer Evening at Cliveden (c. 1910) that was once owned by Churchill. The original belonged to Waldorf Astor who, as a leading British horse breeder, found great affinity with the great horse painter of the 20th century and welcomed Munnings onto his estate to paint horses. This was the case in A Summer Evening, which shows Astor and his trainer inspecting parading horses. In the early 1950s, Astor issued a small run of prints of the painting and gifted them to friends, including Churchill.

Completing the circle, Munnings was a strong supporter of Churchill’s painting (they shared a hostility to modern art) and, while president of the Royal Academy, encouraged his friend to submit two paintings under the pseudonym David Winter. Both were accepted and in 1948 Churchill was elected as Honorary Academician Extraordinary, the only amateur artist to receive the title.

Churchill’s painting coat. Photo: courtesy National Trust/Kate York.

Churchill was first introduced to painting in the summer of 1915 following his disastrous involvement in the Gallipoli campaign. Over the next five decades, he would paint more than 500 paintings, many depicting Chartwell (which he purchased in 1922) and its surroundings. Churchill’s only self-portrait is from 1919 and depicts himself wearing a white painters overall.

“Churchill the Artist” is on view at Chartwell, Mapleton Rd, Westerham, the U.K., February 28–November 1.