The collection of art works presented here reflects the friendship between the Anglo-French post-impressionist painter Paul Maze and Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, the early 20th Century collector of ‘modern’ French painting.

For my wife Jeanne and I, this is a personal sale. Paul Maze was Jeanne’s grandfather, and Ivor Churchill was my father. My father died when I was two in 1956, but both Jeanne and I had the privilege of knowing Paul Maze who lived to see our marriage in 1979.

For Jeanne, Paul was the grandfather who inspired her to become an artist. For me, he was my father’s great friend. My first memory of Paul Maze is travelling with him and my mother to Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral. I would telephone him in the school holidays, and he could be quite theatrical if I didn’t call soon enough. He would send me catalogues of his exhibitions and drawings for my birthday. Our house was filled with his pictures.

My grandmother, Consuelo Balsan (formerly Duchess of Marlborough), introduced Paul Maze to her son Ivor at the end of World War I. Paul’s effervescent personality made a big impression on Ivor, then a young collector. Maze introduced him to his circle of French artists in Paris, including André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Simon Lévy, whose works are represented here. He detected in Ivor the unerring eye which would lead to a collection distinguished by its individuality and prompt the diarist Chips Channon to describe him as “almost the Beckford of our time”.

My father believed that Maze belonged in the company of the great modern French painters. The day before Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940, my father wrote to Paul comparing his landscapes to another of his favourite artists, Johan Barthold Jongkind, the Dutch forerunner to Impressionism. In the 1920s and 1930s, he lent works by Maze from his collection to exhibitions of French painting alongside works by Bonnard, Matisse and Cézanne.

Many of the pictures Jeanne and I have chosen reflect my father’s preferences, some of the early oils have never been shown in public; much of the collection is from the pre-war era when Maze worked principally in oil and watercolour. It was only in the 1930s, when introduced by his friend Édouard Vuillard to the Roché family and their extraordinary handmade pastels, that pastel became Maze’s preferred medium. He later passed his pastel collection to Jeanne, his granddaughter, and pastel is now her chosen medium as an artist.

Portraits of my grandmother, Consuelo Balsan, by Helleu and Violet Rutland and of my father by Ambrose McEvoy make this a personal family collection, as does material from our family archive revealing the depth of Maze’s friendship with my cousin, Sir Winston Churchill.

Jeanne and I have lived with these pictures all our lives and, now in our seventies, we have decided to introduce them to a wider audience. We are delighted that a new generation of collectors will have the opportunity to share in the pleasure they have given us.

Auction Highlights

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Auction Details

Wednesday 21 October, 11.30am BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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Viewing at Dreweatts London (highlights): 16-17 Pall Mall, SW1Y 5LU
Monday 12 October: 10am-4pm
Tuesday 13 October: 10am-7pm
Wednesday 14 October: 10am-4pm

Viewing at Dreweatts Newbury: Donnington Priory, RG14 2JE
Saturday 17 October: 10am-3pm
Sunday 18 October: 10am-3pm
Monday 19 October: 10am-4pm
Tuesday 20 October: 10am-4pm

Further information
General enquiries: + 44 (0) 1635 553 553 | pictures@dreweatts.com
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