# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published August 18, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/who-is-the-best-painter-who-never-painted-for-a-living*

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## Current results (3 votes)

1. **Winston Churchill** — 66.67% (2 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Took up oils at 40 and left over 550 canvases; the Wallace Collection is showing more than 50 of them in 2026.
2. **Ronnie Wood** — 0% (0 votes · score 700/1000)
   Trained at art school before the Rolling Stones and never stopped drawing the band.
3. **David Bowie** — 0% (0 votes · score 700/1000)
   Painted seriously for decades and collected obsessively; his own work was rarely shown in his lifetime.
4. **King Charles III** — 33.33% (1 votes · score 667/1000)
   A watercolourist for fifty years whose lithographs sell for six-figure sums for charity.
5. **Dwight D. Eisenhower** — 0% (0 votes · score 577/1000)
   Started painting in his fifties and produced hundreds of canvases between commands and the presidency.
6. **Sylvester Stallone** — 0% (0 votes · score 500/1000)
   Has painted since before Rocky and has had museum retrospectives in Europe.
7. **Lucy Liu** — 0% (0 votes · score 500/1000)
   Exhibits under a pseudonym and has shown work in Venice and New York.
8. **Tony Bennett** — 0% (0 votes · score 409/1000)
   Signed his canvases Benedetto and got one into the Smithsonian's collection.
9. **Anthony Hopkins** — 0% (0 votes · score 409/1000)
   Turned to bold, high-colour canvases late in life and exhibits them internationally.
10. **Frank Sinatra** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Painted abstracts in his Palm Springs studio and gave most of them away.
11. **Joni Mitchell** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Calls herself a painter derailed by music, and has done most of her own album covers.
12. **Queen Victoria** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Kept watercolour sketchbooks for decades and was taught by professional artists.
13. **Jim Carrey** — 0% (0 votes · score 167/1000)
   Turned a studio in his house into a full-time painting practice.
14. **Viggo Mortensen** — 0% (0 votes · score 167/1000)
   Paints, photographs and publishes his own art books between films.
15. **Miles Davis** — 0% (0 votes · score 167/1000)
   Filled sketchbooks in his last decade and used the results as cover art.

Tags: art, celebrities, painters