Classic Signed Portrait Taken by Photographer Vivienne de CHURCHILL, WINSTON

CHURCHILL, WINSTON. (1874-1965). British statesman and Nobel Prize-winning author; Prime Minister from 1940-45 and 1951-55. SP. ("Winston S. Churchill"). 1p. Postcard. N.p., N.d. [1951 or later]. A 3 3/8" x 3 5/8" black-and-white bust photograph of the dour statesman taken by British photographer VIVIENNE (1889-1982) in 1951, signed in the photograph's lower blank margin.

Churchill distinguished himself as a soldier, author, and, under Stanley Baldwin, Chancellor of the Exchequer. In that post Churchill returned Great Britain to the gold standard, which led to increased unemployment and a growing unpopularity that culminated in his 1929 election defeat. Although he spent the next ten years out of office, Churchill remained active in public life and, in 1939, when England officially declared war on Germany, he became First Lord of the Admiralty, the governing body of the Royal Navy. He rose to the height of fame as England's prime minister during World War II. From 1945, when the Labor party regained power, until 1951, when a Conservative victory again made him prime minister, Churchill continued to write and champion the cause of British security and world peace. He is the author of the six-volume The Second World War, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and Marlborough: His Life and Times, among many other titles, for which he was awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Vivienne (Florence Vivienne Mellish) was a leading society portrait photographer who began as an assistant to her husband Ernest and their son, Antony. In 1949, Antony, by then making a career photographing actors in Hollywood, married Churchill's daughter Sarah (her second marriage), an actress. Both families became friends and Vivienne made many portraits of Churchill. Antony committed suicide in 1957.

Attached to a stiff mount roughly 5" x 7" in size. The signature is slightly faded. Otherwise fine.