Charlotte Johnson Wahl dies: from painter to supreme authority of prime ministers

Boris Johnson’s painter’s mother has died suddenly but peacefully, after a 40-year battle with Parkinson, the family has announced.

Charlotte Johnson Wahl died yesterday at the age of 79 at St Marys Hospital in Paddington, central London. An accomplished artist, she has been praised by the prime minister who taught him the equal value of every human being, he said recently, which published the death notice.

Senior figures from across the political spectrum, including Labor leader Keir Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, have sent their condolences after the woman’s death, once described by the prime minister as the supreme authority of his family.

Born in 1942, she was the daughter of international lawyer Sir James Fawcett, who advised the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund as well as the European Commission of Human Rights.

One of five children, she read English in Oxford, where she met her future husband, Stanley Johnson, at a dinner party in 1962. I was engaged to someone named Wynford Hicks, who was extremely handsome to look at, but in quite boring fact, she said. Tatler magazine in 2015.

She married Johnson eight months later, before graduating from Lady Margaret Hall – becoming the first college woman married in college. The couple continued to have four children together: Boris, former Conservative MP Jo, Remainer and journalist Rachel, and BBC presenter and eco-entrepreneur Leo, who has described himself as non-political.

Addressing his first Conservative Party Conference as Prime Minister in 2019, the Conservative leader told delegates that his mother had taught him to believe in the equal importance, the equal dignity, the equal value of every human being on the planet. . But her life was not without problems.

In an article onSunday Times in 2015, daughter Rachel wrote that Johnson Wahl had suffered from depression and obsessive-compulsive galloping disorder and had a nervous breakdown while the family lived in Brussels in 1974.

My mother rolled in and out of clinics, but the show had to go on, wrote Rachel, who described how the babysitter became the fortress keeper in the absence of her mothers.

Johnson Wahls’ marriage also suffered and she divorced in 1979. She married American historian Nicholas Wahl in 1988.

But she said she was on good terms with her first husband because I could not bear not to be, The Times reported.

While dealing with family life, Johnson Wahl gained fame as a professional portrait painter. Her famous seats included Joanna Lumley, Simon Jenkins and Jilly Cooper, though she painted other themes as well, including landscapes.

In 2015, the Mall Galleries in London presented an exhibition of her work called Too Much Mind, which defined her troubled life, including her experiences of marriage, motherhood, and mental breakdown. Johnson Wahl paints with honesty and unwavering power, tha galeriaWith Above all, these paintings reveal a deep understanding of the complex human condition and a sensitivity to our struggle.

On the eve of the exhibition, her friend and curator Nell Butler wrote an article forTelegraphin which Johnson Wahl described how he became an artist.

My older sister was extremely smart, just like my little brother, she said. My parents did not know what to do with me, so they gave me some colors and I turned out to be good at it. Once I started, I couldn’t stop.

However, painting became more difficult after she was diagnosed with Parkinson at the age of 40. Johnson Wahl told Tatler I would spend all my time crashing and jumping, though subsequent medical treatments helped reduce her symptoms.

But despite her love of painting, her children are undoubtedly her great joy and they are devoted to her, the magazine said.

Her daughter, Rachel, told Tatler that as I get older, I realize how lucky I am to have her as a mother.

She somehow enhances everyone she meets, and her extraordinary ability to appreciate other people – though seemingly unhappy with her charm or attraction – makes her understand why they are loved, Rachel added. .

If any of her children have any sensibilities or humanity – hopefully not too big – it is largely thanks to her.