In 1954 the English artist Graham Sutherland was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. The 1,000 guinea fee for the painting was funded by donations from members of the House of Commons and House of Lords. The painting was presented to Churchill by both Houses of Parliament at a public ceremony in Westminster Hall on his 80th birthday on 30 November 1954.


Churchill hated the portrait. After the public presentation, the painting was taken to his country home at Chartwell but was not put on display. After the death of Lady Churchill in 1977, it became clear that she had the painting destroyed some months after it was delivered.


Churchill was an elder statesman in 1954, then towards the end of his second period as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Sutherland had a reputation as a modernist painter with some recent successful portraits, such as Somerset Maugham in 1949. He was drawn to capturing the real person: some sitters considered his disinclination to flattery as a form of cruelty or disparagement.


Sutherland and Churchill had very different conceptions of the painting. Churchill hoped to be depicted in his robes as a Knight of the Garter, but the commission specified that he should be shown in his usual parliamentary dress – a black morning coat, with waistcoat and striped trousers, and a spotted bow tie.


Sutherland made charcoal sketches of Churchill at a handful of sittings at Chartwell from August 1954, concentrating on Churchill's hands and face, and then made some oil studies. Sutherland also worked from photographs by Elsbeth Juda. He took his preliminary materials back to his studio to create the final work on a large square canvas, the shape chosen to figuratively represent Churchill's solidity, reflecting a remark that Churchill made, "I am a rock".


The pose, with Churchill grasping the arms of his chair, recalls the statue of US President Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Churchill is shown scowling, slightly slumped forward, surrounded by wintry grey, brown and black tones. Sutherland was reluctant to discuss the work in progress with Churchill and showed the subject few of his working materials. Churchill's wife thought it was a good resemblance – "really quite alarmingly like him" – but also said it made him look too cross, while recognising that it was a familiar expression. Churchill's son Randolph thought the portrait made him look "disenchanted".


Churchill's wife viewed the completed portrait on 20 November 1954 and took a photograph back to her husband. It was his first view of the work, and he was deeply upset. He described it to Lord Moran as "filthy" and "malignant",
and complained that it made him “look like a down-and-out drunk who has been picked out of the gutter in the Strand.”
With only 10 days to go, he sent a note to Sutherland stating that "the painting, however masterly in execution, is not suitable" and declaring that the ceremony would go ahead without it. Sutherland maintained that he honestly painted what he saw. MP Charles Doughty persuaded Churchill that the presentation had to go ahead, to avoid offending the donors.

This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). The full text of the article is here →