British PM Boris Johnson’s Mother Is Dead

Charlotte Johnson Wahl, the mother of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is dead.

Gatekeepers News reports that Wahl who died on Monday at age 75, passed away at St Mary’s Hospital Paddington on Monday.

Wahl, a painter, was once described as the “supreme authority” in the family by her son.

He credited her with instilling in him the equal value of every human life, Evening Standard reports.

The notice in the Times says she was a “Painter. Mother of Alexander, Rachel Leo, and Joseph; grandmother of Ludovic, Lara, Charlotte, Milo, Oliver, Cassia, Theodore, Rose, Lula, William, Ruby Noor, Stephanie and Wilfred.”

Wahl, the daughter of barrister Sir James Fawcett, studied English at Oxford University.

She interrupted her education to travel to America with Stanley Johnson – who she married in 1963 – before returning to complete her degree as the first married female undergraduate at her college, Lady Margaret Hall.

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

As an artist, she made her name as a portrait painter – her sitters included Joanna Lumley and Jilly Cooper – although throughout her life she painted other subjects, including landscapes.

In the years following her divorce, she refused to accept any money from her former husband, eking out a living by selling paintings. She later recalled she was “very hard up”.

In 1988, she married the American professor Nicholas Wahl and moved to New York where she began painting cityscapes – which were the subject of a sell-out exhibition in 2004 – but returned to London following his death in 1996.

At the age of 40, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease but she never allowed her illness to prevent her painting, steadying herself with a walking frame as she worked.

During an interview in 2008, she had said: “I try to paint every day if I possibly can, though I have to go to the hospital a lot.

“I still manage to paint, though my arm will suddenly do a movement which is completely unintentional and that almost brings me to tears.”