View near Vence in the Alpes-Maritimes 

'View near Vence in the Alpes-Maritimes' was painted by Winston Churchill using oil paints. What’s interesting here is how this quite conventional landscape painting speaks to issues of class and labor. Churchill took up painting relatively late in life, as a form of relaxation. For him, this wasn't work; it was a privilege afforded by his social position. We see this in the freedom of his brushstrokes, applied with a kind of assured amateurism. The light in this landscape is particularly notable; he is less interested in rendering details, than in capturing the overall effect of the scene. The quick, confident application of paint suggests a kind of leisure, a stark contrast to the labor of those who built the village he depicts, or indeed the labor required of most professional artists. Ultimately, this painting offers an insight into how artistic practice can be inflected by the social circumstances of its making, underlining that even a seemingly straightforward landscape can be deeply embedded in a web of social and economic relations.