Who is the best painter who never painted for a living?

None of them needed the money and all of them kept going anyway. A few have had museum retrospectives; at least one signed the canvases with a different name.

1. 1
   Winston Churchill

   Took up oils at 40 and left over 550 canvases; the Wallace Collection is showing more than 50 of them in 2026.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Ronnie Wood

   Trained at art school before the Rolling Stones and never stopped drawing the band.
   700pts
3. 3
   David Bowie

   Painted seriously for decades and collected obsessively; his own work was rarely shown in his lifetime.
   700pts
4. 4
   King Charles III

   A watercolourist for fifty years whose lithographs sell for six-figure sums for charity.
   667pts
5. 5
   Dwight D. Eisenhower

   Started painting in his fifties and produced hundreds of canvases between commands and the presidency.
   577pts
6. 6
   Sylvester Stallone

   Has painted since before Rocky and has had museum retrospectives in Europe.
   500pts
7. 7
   Lucy Liu

   Exhibits under a pseudonym and has shown work in Venice and New York.
   500pts
8. 8
   Tony Bennett

   Signed his canvases Benedetto and got one into the Smithsonian's collection.
   409pts
9. 9
   Anthony Hopkins

   Turned to bold, high-colour canvases late in life and exhibits them internationally.
   409pts
10. 10
    Frank Sinatra

    Painted abstracts in his Palm Springs studio and gave most of them away.
    300pts
11. 11
    Joni Mitchell

    Calls herself a painter derailed by music, and has done most of her own album covers.
    300pts
12. 12
    Queen Victoria

    Kept watercolour sketchbooks for decades and was taught by professional artists.
    300pts
13. 13
    Jim Carrey

    Turned a studio in his house into a full-time painting practice.
    0pts
14. 14
    Viggo Mortensen

    Paints, photographs and publishes his own art books between films.
    0pts
15. 15
    Miles Davis

    Filled sketchbooks in his last decade and used the results as cover art.
    0pts

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