Boris Johnson Loses Mother, Charlotte Johnson Wahl

The United Kingdom prime minister’s mother, Charlotte Johnson Wahl, has died aged 79.

A notice published in the Times newspaper said she died “suddenly and peacefully” at St Mary’s Hospital in west London.

Boris Johnson once described his mother, who was a painter, as the “supreme authority” in the family.

Johnson Wahl, whose father was president of the European Commission for Human Rights in the 1970s, married Stanley Johnson in 1963 before completing her degree at Oxford University as the first married female undergraduate at her college.

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The couple had four children – Boris, journalist Rachel, former minister Jo and environmentalist Leo. They divorced in 1979.

As an artist, Mrs Johnson Wahl made her name as a portrait painter, with actress Joanna Lumley and author Jilly Cooper among her subjects.

In 1988, she married American professor Nicholas Wahl and moved to New York – where she began painting cityscapes. She returned to London in 1996 following his death.

At the age of 40, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease but continued painting, steadying herself with a walking frame as she worked.