All the King’s Men: Peter Cushing’s impressive 5,000-piece collection of model soldiers & trains

03.31.2020
03:51 pm
Topics:
Art
Movies
Tags:
Peter Cushing
Frederick Ping
model soldiers

Actor Peter Cushing in a contemplative moment playing his war games with his minature models.

“Television is a rather frightening business. But I get all the relaxation I want from my collection of model soldiers.”

—veteran actor Peter Cushing explaining his love of model soldiers in 1958.

The 2004 biography about his life, In All Sincerity, Peter Cushing, is a revealing read about the actor who, by all accounts, was one of the most gracious and kind people to ever work in film. Regarded as one of the UK’s finest actors, Cushing cut his remarkable acting chops early in life and, at the same time, pursued his love of drawing and art. While Cushing was still trying to make his name in cinema, he sold scarfs he hand-painted himself. In addition to painting watercolors, Cushing held on to a part of his childhood, collecting and painting model soldiers and trains. His love of miniature models would last his entire life, during which the actor would amass over 5,000 individual models (not toys mind you) of soldiers, trains, trees and landscape, horses, castles, historically accurate battle gear and more. All of which he painted by hand.

A proud member of the British Model Soldier Society, Cushing used his models for formal gameplay in accordance with H.G. Wells as outlined in his book Little Wars (1913), and its companion, Floor Games, published in 1911. Known as “hobby war games,” the games would take hours to complete, and (according to Cushing) if played to the letter, approximately nine hours would be consumed by one war game. The British Model Soldier society was formed in 1935 by a group of fifteen, all-male members (Wells denoted in his book that the games were to be played by boys between the ages of twelve to one hundred), who would meet up at a pub. Cushing was so serious about his therapeutic pastime he engaged the services of Frederick Ping—a pioneer of model soldier art. Considered a master of the medium, nearly all of Ping’s figures were forged from scratch, and in addition to Cushing, his figures were revered by aristocrats and the well-to-do. Cushing would commission Ping to create soldiers for him, which he would, in turn, paint meticulously by hand. The only thing more intriguing than the man who played Dr. Van Helsing, Victor Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who and Grand Moff Tarkin are the photos and television footage of Cushing with his massive model collection.