It was Sutherland’s practice to prepare detailed sketches, almost completely finished works, often close. Sutherland considered the destruction of his painting an act of vandalism, but when one considers that portraits, particularly official ones for public display, have always been a combination of visual record and propaganda, it is perhaps unsurprising that a likeness the subject did not consider flattering should have been suppressed. At the birthday celebrations at Westminster Hall in November 1954, Churchill was presented with a portrait by Graham Sutherland, commissioned by past and present members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Word came that this was not the first Churchill portrait his wife saw fit to condemn: those by Paul Maze and Walter Sickert also disappeared under her watch. Lady Churchill had hidden it in the cellar at Chartwell at her request, the Churchills’ private secretary, Grace Hamblin, had it removed and secretly burned on a bonfire. It was destroyed shortly thereafter, with news of its obliteration emerging only in 1978. The work was destined for permanent display in the Houses of Parliament after Churchill’s death, but it was initially given to him as a gift. One of his political opponents described it as ‘a beautiful work’, while an ally dismissed it as ‘disgusting’. The presentation was to be televised, which meant Churchill was obliged to compliment the painting, though he did so with faint (one might say feint) praise, saying that it displayed ‘force and candour’ and was ‘a remarkable example of modern art’. He was persuaded only with great difficulty to accept the portrait at the ceremony in order to avoid causing offence. Ten days before the official presentation, he wrote to Sutherland, rejecting the painting and declaring that the ceremony would not include it. On seeing a photograph of it, he called it ‘malignant … filthy’. We are a UK Registered Charity and US IRS 501c3 Registered Nonprofit. is the world’s preeminent member organisation dedicated to preserving the historic legacy of Sir Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill,, Westminster Hall, London. While Lady Churchill was said to have remarked that it looked ‘really quite alarmingly like him’, and Churchill’s son, Randolph, thought it made his father look ‘disenchanted’, the sitter himself hated it at once. Graham Sutherland’s Portrait Quotes Graham Sutherland’s Portrait. The result, when it was revealed on Novemto Clementine Churchill, was not a smashing success. Glory in the Tetramorph between 1954-7 and a portrait of Winston Churchill. Churchill reluctantly accepts Graham Sutherland’s portrait in Westminster Hall in November 1954 It was in 1921 that Sutherland persuaded his parents to let him study art.
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