The Painting That Never Left
Look at that view. The colorful boats, the cliffs, the way the bay curves like a horseshoe. This is what Winston Churchill saw on January 8, 1950, when he set up his easel right about where you're standing.
He was 75, recovering from a stroke his doctors called a chill, and he'd delayed a luxury liner by 20 minutes to get here. That was unprecedented for the Union Castle Line, but when you're Churchill, ships wait. He stayed at Reid's Palace in Funchal and came here in a borrowed Rolls Royce owned by the Leacock wine family. A detective held an umbrella over him while he painted. A local photographer named Raul Perestrelo captured it all.
The painting he made that day, Câmara de Lobos, The Fishing Port of Madeira, hangs at Chartwell in England. It's never been sold, which is probably for the best. One of his other Madeira paintings went for 8.3 million pounds at Christie's in 2021. This one would fetch more.
Here's the thing nobody mentions: Churchill was here for twelve days total, left when Prime Minister Attlee called a snap election, and never came back. Twelve days. Yet there's a bronze statue of him down by the harbor, a Churchill Plaza, a Churchill restaurant marking his exact painting spot, and an entire island wide painting route with his name on it.
He told his wife the visit was nothing but toil and moil. When he arrived to massive crowds, he reportedly said he'd never been greeted with such enthusiasm by people for whom he'd done nothing. The man understood irony.
So take your photo. You're standing where one old politician spent a few hours painting to recover from a stroke. That brief moment has been monetized for 75 years and counting.
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