Charlotte Johnson Wahl


Charlotte Maria Offlow Johnson Wahl is a British artist. She is the mother of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Early life and education

Born Charlotte Offlow Fawcett in Oxford, Charlotte Johnson Wahl is the daughter of Frances and Sir James Fawcett. She was the granddaughter of Americans Elias Avery Lowe, a palaeographer of Russian Jewish descent, and Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, a translator. She read English at Oxford University, and was the first married female undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall. She interrupted her studies to go to the US with her husband Stanley Johnson whom she met at Oxford and married in Marylebone, London in 1963. She later returned and was awarded a second-class honours degree.

Paintings

Johnson Wahl is recorded as having "made her name as a professional portrait painter" for Crispin Tickell, Joanna Lumley, Jilly Cooper, Simon Jenkins, and others, but she also paints landscapes which have been described as echoing the Vorticist style.
She continues to paint. Her paintings sell for £1,000 to £5,000. Two of Wahl's paintings are in the collection of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind; another two are in the collections of Oxford University colleges.

Personal life

Johnson Wahl is the mother of Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, and the former MP Jo Johnson, the journalist Rachel Johnson, and the entrepreneur Leo Johnson. She and Stanley Johnson divorced in 1979. Johnson Wahl then married American professor Nicholas Wahl in 1988, but was widowed in 1996. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the age of 40.
It was revealed by her son, Boris Johnson, during his speech to the Conservative Party conference, that his mother voted for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum. This was also Boris Johnson's preferred outcome.