Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

R I D D L E S , M Y S T E R I E S , E N I G M A S
Q
Recently
“The trouble was not that [Sutherland] admired the PM too little,
but rather that he worshipped him too blindly....”
The 1954 Sutherland Portrait
on BBC Radio 4, antiquarian book dealer Rick Gekoski spoke of the
Sutherland portrait of Churchill, commissioned by Parliament as a tribute on
his 80th birthday in 1954, saying it was destroyed by his wife because she hated it so
much. It portrayed the PM hunched with age and dark in mood. A detailed study by the
artist still hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Gekoski asked if the rights of an owner
override those of the public, and if the Churchills had the moral right to destroy it. What
were Sutherland’s personal feelings toward Churchill It looks like the sort of painting
you’d do of someone you didn’t like very well. —James Mack, Fairfield, Ohio
This is an old story, remarked as early
as Finest Hour’s fourth issue back in
1969. The occasion was a signal one,
and Churchill’s words were apposite.
“The portrait,” he told the assembled
Members of the Houses of Commons
and Lords, “is a remarkable example of
modern art. It certainly combines force
with candour.”
Lord Moran recalled: “There was a
little pause, and then a gust of laughter
swept the hall.” In truth, Churchill
hated the portrait and, if private property
still has any meaning, Clementine
Churchill was within her rights to do as
she wished with it.
kkk
It seems that there was a cordial
relationship with the Sutherlands during
the sittings, despite certain reservations
about the artist’s work. From Martin
Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8
“Never Despair” (London: Heinemann,
1988), 1059:
On September 1 [1954] Clementine
Churchill wrote to her daughter Mary:
“Mr. Graham Sutherland is a ‘Wow.’
He really is a most attractive man and
one can hardly believe that the savage
cruel designs which he exhibits come
from his brush. Papa has given him 3
sittings and no one has seen the beginnings
of the portrait except Papa and
he is much struck by the power of his
drawing.” “He used to dictate while he
was sitting,” Miss Portal [a secretary]
later recalled, and she added:
“Sutherland would not let him see it.
He would scribble on a piece of paper
and say ‘this is what it is going to be.’
But he wouldn’t let us see the picture
itself.” Each time Sutherland left
Chequers, the portrait was covered up.
When he finished, it was taken away,
still unseen.
kkk
Lady Soames, certainly a primary
source on the episode, writes in her
book Churchill: His Life as a Painter
(London: Collins, 1990), 193-95,
quoting several contemporaries who
observed the events:
Churchill and Sutherland got on
well together, and Winston had
demanded at the outset, “Are you going
to paint me as a bulldog or a cherub”
To which the painter replied, “This
depends on what you show me!”…
.Sutherland seems to have come to like
his subject during the long hours of
work. He told Fleur Cowles: “He was
always considerate, always kind, always
amusing and cooperative”….Graham
Sutherland and his charming wife
Kathleen, who sometimes came with
him, were much liked by both Winston
and Clementine, and by the other
members of the family, but alas, as is
now so well known, the story ended in
tears. When Churchill saw the finished
portrait, delivered to Number 10 about
a week before its formal presentation at
a great gathering in Westminster Hall,
he took a violent dislike to it.
Clementine, who had been shown the
picture by Graham Sutherland before
Winston saw it, had at first sight
seemed inclined to like it, but later she
came to share Winston’s feelings.
Seeing how deeply he was upset by the
picture she promised him that “it
would never see the light of day.”
Send your questions to the editor
kkk
Lord Moran’s Churchill:
The Struggle for Survival (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1966) provides a
further glimpse of the episode (659-60).
Although we tend to discount Moran
when he disagrees with superior authorities,
in this case we think he makes a
canny observation. Speaking of his
patient the doctor wrote:
A lot of his time since the end of
the war had been spent in arranging
and editing the part he will play in
history, and it has been rather a shock
to him that his ideas and those of
Graham Sutherland seem so far apart.
“Filthy,” he spluttered. “I think it is
malignant.” Was Winston fair to the
artist Sutherland’s intentions, at any
rate, seem to have been unexceptionable.
The trouble was not that he
admired the PM too little, but rather
that he worshipped him too blindly.
Graham Sutherland was thinking of
the Churchill who had stopped the
enemy and saved England, and the
manner in which, without a word of
guidance, Mr. Churchill took up a
pose on the dais convinced the painter
that he was on the right tack. “I
wanted,” he said, “to paint him with a
kind of four-square look, to picture
Churchill as a rock.”
One day at Chartwell—it was either
the first or second sitting—Sutherland
said to me: “There are so many
Churchills. I have to find the real one.”
When I learnt that he intended to
paint a lion at bay I tried to sound a
warning note. “Don’t forget,” I said,
“that Winston is always acting, try to
see him when he has got the greasepaint
off his face.” But the artist paid
no heed; he painted the PM as he pictured
him in his own favourite part.
And why should Winston complain,
for surely it was he who created the
role All that Graham Sutherland did
was to accept the legend for the truth.
Finest Hour has vowed to respect
Lady Churchill’s wish and never to run
an image of the Sutherland portrait—it’s
easily Googled, after all. ,
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