80th birthday winston churchill painting sutherland

The presentation ceremony at Westminster Hall was recorded by the BBC. MP Charles Doughty persuaded Churchill that the presentation had to go ahead, to avoid offending the donors. Sutherland maintained that he honestly painted what he saw. With only 10 days to go, he sent a note to Sutherland rejecting the portrait and stating that the ceremony would go ahead without it. He described it as 'filthy' and 'malignant'. It was his first view of the work, and he was deeply upset. ReceptionĬhurchill's wife viewed the completed portrait on 20 November 1954 and took a photograph back to her husband. Churchill's son Randolph thought the portrait made him look 'disenchanted'. 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.

Sutherland was reluctant to discuss the work in progress with Churchill and showed the subject few of his working materials.

Churchill is shown scowling, slightly slumped forward, surrounded by wintery grey, brown and black tones. 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. 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'. Sutherland also worked from photographs by Elsbeth Juda. 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. 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 and Churchill had very different conceptions of the painting.

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

80th birthday winston churchill painting sutherland