Oscar Nemon, Sculptor of Churchill Likenesses, Dies

LONDON — Oscar Nemon, the sculptor who made more than 50 likenesses of Sir Winston Churchill and whose busts of world leaders are on exhibit in many European capitals, died Sunday in John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, his wife said. He was 79.

Other well-known figures he sculpted included Queen Mother Elizabeth, Sigmund Freud, British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Last year, a plan to place Nemon’s life-size bronze of Churchill and his wife outside St. Paul’s Cathedral was abandoned when the the city corporation governing London’s financial district refused to pay the equivalent of $141,000 needed for the project. Instead, a cast was shipped to Kansas City, Mo.

Queen Elizabeth II, who was sculpted by the Yugoslavia-born Nemon, commissioned a Churchill bust for Windsor Castle. Another statue of the World War II leader is near Churchill’s country home at Chartwell, Kent.

Churchill, a talented amateur painter, made his only venture into sculpture by producing a bust of Nemon.

Nemon’s last commission was an unfinished head of Princess Diana for a private collector. The princess attended only one sitting, about a week before Nemon died of undisclosed causes.