British statesman, soldier, writer and UK Prime Minister (1940–45 and 1951–55) Winston Churchill (1874–1965) and the sculptor Oscar Nemon first met at La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech in 1951, when Nemon’s unofficial sketch of Churchill, observed in the dining room, brought approval from Lady Churchill, who said it ‘represents to me my husband as I see him and as I think of him’. Official commissions to sculpt Churchill followed and in 1952, her coronation year, Queen Elizabeth II commissioned a Nemon bust of Churchill for Windsor Castle. A further seated portrait of Churchill for the Guildhall in London was unveiled in 1955.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Nemon was invited privately to Churchill’s Chartwell and London homes and privately recorded his ‘bellicose, challenging, and deliberately provocative’ character. He aimed in his sculptures at ‘not merely a likeness, but a biography of his life’. Nemon was the subject of a reciprocal sculpture by Churchill, created while Nemon was at work on Churchill’s sculpture.

This piece, from the 1950s, is a miniature painted resin version of one of Nemon’s likenesses, produced by the Nemon estate.