Consuelo and Jacques Balsan were generous friends and hosts, giving Maze and his family the use of the Mill house on the River Eure on their 235 acre estate at Saint-Georges-Motel during the summers in the 1930s. Maze would gather musicians, writers and artists including Dunoyer de Segonzac, Simon Levy and Odette des Garets and Winston and his wife Clementine would often join them. He and Maze would set up their easels and paint together, often side by side. Churchill would work directly onto a white canvas with no ground colour, just as the Impressionists had done. His finished painting of the Mill is on display on the wall opposite.

"Winston Churchill with painting, as in everything else, was a man of action.. Naturally at times, he would ask what was wrong when he realised he had gone astray..then I would offer a suggestion. Churchill was humble about his painting...I have always loved and admired the masters, but I know my place" Paul Maze commenting in his interview with Wolfgang Fischer, 1967.

Recalling those summers in her book, The Glitter and the Gold, Consuelo Vanderbilt-Balsan wrote: "This mill in time became an enchanting place which we lent to friends, and in the summers of 1938 and 1939, when it was full of children, Motel was gay with laughter and sound."