A major new exhibition titled Winston Churchill: The Painter opened in May at the Wallace Collection in London. One of the paintings on display is on loan from ICAS, having been gifted to the institute by its owner, James Wood CA, who was the former Prime Minister’s accountant for many years.

ICAS Secretary Helen Howden has delved into the archives to discover how the painting came to be in our possession.

James was given the 63.5 x 76cm landscape, which appears in the exhibition as View near Marrakech, by Churchill’s wife, Clementine. He subsequently bequeathed it to ICAS in his will.

Exactly how James first came into contact with Churchill is unclear but we know he handled the PM’s financial affairs for approximately four decades. He was born in St Boswells in the Scottish Borders in 1886, one of six brothers and the son of a master butcher, and co-founded his practice Wood, Willey & Co in 1934. 

According to David Lough’s book, No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money, James served as his ‘farm accountant’, but was asked to help restore some financial order when the then-backbench MP ran into financial difficulty in the late 1930s, during his ‘wilderness years’.

James, wrote Lough, “suggested losing three of the servants to save wages of £240 a year; reducing the swimming pool temperature to halve heating costs; pruning the £240 annual laundry bill; and, boldest of all, recommended that spending on wine and cigars should be ‘investigated’.”

Despite this parsimony, their friendship survived. In 1949, James was given a first-edition, first-print copy of Painting as a Pastime, Churchill’s essay about his favourite hobby. The book was inscribed and dated in his hand and accompanied by his compliments slip.

Shortly before he passed away, James engaged in correspondence with the ICAS Secretary of that time in a letter in which he explained that he was “Personal Accountant and Taxation & Financial Adviser” to Churchill for some 40 years up to the wartime leader’s death in 1965. 

He also wrote that, “As the Institute of CAs in Scotland has done so much for me, I have bequeathed it to them… The picture hangs at my home unseen except occasionally by me. It occurs to me that if the [ICAS] President & Council so wish the Painting might be hung at 29 Queen Street from now on.”

James went on to say that “I do not wish any publicity” and that “the painting is of a view at Marrakesh [sic] in Morocco and is insured for £5,000”.

The ‘Red City’, as it is known, was one of Churchill’s favourite destinations. He made six visits from 1935 to 1959, and in January 1943 famously persuaded US President Franklin Roosevelt to travel there with him, following the Casablanca Conference. He would usually stay at La Mamounia hotel and would often set up his easel in the hotel’s gardens. He completed a painting for Roosevelt during that trip, the only piece he produced during the war.

He used the hotel as his base in 1947 when working on his memoirs. He and his entourage racked up an eye-watering drinks bill – there is a bar at the hotel named in his honour.

James passed away in 1972, at which point ownership of the painting was transferred to ICAS. Five years later, James’s niece, Elizabeth, who lived on India Street, Edinburgh, visited the old ICAS office on Queen Street to see the painting. ICAS also wrote to James’s nephew, Robert – a CA at Wood, Willey and Co – to let him know where the painting was positioned.

The work forms part of the first major exhibition of the former PM’s work. Co-curator Dr Lucy Davis says: “Churchill approached painting with an intensity that mirrored his political life, though he turned to the canvas for very different reasons. What emerges is a painter who begins cautiously, inspired by [John] Lavery and [William] Nicholson, and who ends up forging a surprisingly bold visual language of his own. This exhibition lets visitors see the private creative dynamics behind the public figure.”