Clementine Ogilvy Spencer-Churchill (née Hozier), Baroness Spencer-Churchill; Sarah Churchill

Clementine Hozier married Winston Churchill in 1908, and this 1915 double portrait by Lavery — showing her with her young daughter Sarah — was painted during the First World War at a moment of acute political drama for the Churchill family. Winston Churchill had resigned from the Admiralty following the Gallipoli disaster just months before this sitting, and the painting captures Clementine in a period of personal strain combined with the domestic ordinariness of motherhood. Lavery was a close friend of both Churchills and painted the family on multiple occasions; his access was intimate rather than merely professional. The warmth and informality of this double portrait reflects that friendship. The National Portrait Gallery holds the work.

Lavery handled this domestic double portrait with particular warmth — lighter in palette and freer in brushwork than his formal commissions. The relationship between mother and child organises the composition, with Clementine's figure given prominence through scale and the careful direction of light onto her face. Sarah's smaller presence creates a tender vertical counterpoint.