Charlotte Johnson Wahl: not just the mother of Boris, but a very great artist
Boris Johnson with Charlotte Wahl Johnson
Much has been made of Boris Johnson’s childhood ambition to be “world king”. But there was always someone else in his world who was the “supreme authority”, far above the future Prime Minister. God? Perhaps. His mother? Undoubtedly.
Charlotte Johnson Wahl, who died on Monday aged 79, was much more than a matriarch. In the catalogue of her 2015 retrospective, Minding Too Much, the then Mayor of London wrote: “Look, I grew up with the absolute certainty that my mother was a great artist. A very great artist.” Boris may not generally be much of an art critic, but in this case he was not wrong.
It is a kind of miracle that Johnson Wahl was able to create such a large and impressive body of work. Painting the Johnsons, a brilliant film documentary about Charlotte’s life and art directed by Rupert Edwards made to coincide with her exhibition at The Mall Galleries, revealed to the world in excruciating detail her mental and physical ordeal over nearly half a century.
The daughter of a distinguished academic and diplomat, Professor Sir James Fawcett, Charlotte was always a rebel against her Establishment background. She later recalled that her parents didn’t know what to do with her, so encouraged her to paint. Expelled from her convent school, she somehow got into Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, to read English, but then met Stanley Johnson, later an MEP, at a lunch at All Souls given by her father. He made her laugh and she married him aged just 21, despite being penniless — which meant that their honeymoon was spent picking potatoes in Kent. They then set up home in New York so that Stanley could study at Columbia. Having given birth there to Alexander de Pfeffel Boris in 1964, she returned to Oxford with the baby to complete her degree. By now pregnant with Rachel, she was the first married undergraduate at LMH to sit her Finals.
Still only 23, Charlotte had no choice but to grow up fast. She had little opportunity to paint, though her early family portraits already show huge talent and a distinctive style. After a spell living near Exmoor — later to become the family’s country base — the Johnsons returned to the US, this time to Washington where Stanley worked at the World Bank. A third child (Leo) was born. Charlotte lived through the protests, riots and assassinations of 1968, which left her “upset and unsettled”, before another move back to New York. In 1969 they returned to Britain; the family moved constantly from one house to another and between Exmoor and London. Two years later, Jo, her fourth and last child, was born just after Stanley — a lifelong campaigner on the then new issue of “overpopulation” — joined the International Planned Parenthood Federation. By 1973 they were on the move again, this time to Brussels, where Stanley became a official at the European Commission. Money was less of a problem, but Charlotte’s mental health was in serious decline, not helped by Stanley’s infidelities.
In 1974 Charlotte had a breakdown, with severe symptoms that included hallucinations and obsessive compulsive disorder. Admitted to the Maudsley Hospital, a pioneering centre for psychiatry, Charlotte was subjected to therapies that would now be considered inappropriate, indeed almost barbaric. She spent many months separated from her beloved children. Her paintings of this grim period are dark, shocking and reminiscent of other artists who have suffered or witnessed insanity, from Van Gogh to Munch and Kirchner. Her art was the main therapy that enabled her to recover, though she was later treated at a Belgian clinic and her mental health remained fragile for years.
After her turbulent marriage to Stanley ended in divorce — he once broke her nose, but they remained friends — Charlotte lived quietly and at first penuriously in London, earning a living by producing portraits and landscapes. After her children had grown up, she remarried, this time to an American art historian, Professor Nicholas Wahl, and moved to New York. Her return in the late 1980s coincided with a new crisis: she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, though the symptoms had been apparent before.
Charlotte dealt stoically with this affliction, using a walking frame to steady herself at the easel. She also suffered from acute anxiety amid the oppressive urban landscape, though she once again overcame her fears by the therapeutic method of depicting them on canvas. Her work in New York was her best so far and she finally began to receive recognition there. Still close to her children, she also became a grandmother. One more tragedy awaited her, however: her husband Nicholas developed cancer and died in her arms after only eight years of marriage.
She moved back to London in 1996 and has lived here ever since. In 2012 Charlotte’s Parkinson’s was treated with Deep Brain stimulation, whereby a pulse generator is inserted into the chest, connected by fine wires to the brain. The stimuli calmed her shaking and enabled her to go on painting to the end of her life. Though her mobility was increasingly limited, she was surrounded by the love of her children, her 13 grandchildren and her many friends. The 2015 retrospective was a moment of triumph for her and gratifying for her family, as she finally received her due from the art world.
Boris, with whom she seldom agreed on politics, was devoted to his mother. When he moved into 10 Downing Street, he filled it with her pictures, some of which he had owned since his Oxford days. They are hard to define in art historical terms — somewhere between Pop Art and Expressionism, perhaps — but of their originality and power there can be no doubt. Charlotte was also a superb draughtswoman, possessed of a delicate line of great beauty. There is an overwhelming case for at least one of the major public collections (Tate Modern or the National Portrait Gallery are obvious candidates) to acquire a representative body of her work for the nation. And a new retrospective should be held as soon as possible, perhaps at the Royal Academy, if only to atone for never having elected her as a Fellow.
It must be rare, if not unique, for a British statesman to be the offspring of an important artist. Women still struggled to be taken seriously in the art world of the 1960s and 1970s, as Charlotte’s career demonstrates. Now the prejudices of that same art world against her son may be held against her. Having endured so much adversity in her peripatetic and perilous life, she should not have to contend posthumously with the colossal condescension of the culture vultures. Having had the privilege of encountering this extraordinary personality, I am confident that Charlotte Johnson Wahl’s reputation will only grow as future generations marvel at her life-affirming art.
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