Sutherland: I think that’s possibly too much to ask for. The resulting dialogue was a pinnacle of poignancy that captured the ideal beauty of art fed by the deep pain of reality. Likewise, Sutherland analyzed some of Churchill’s paintings and responded in kind. He began to research Sutherland’s style and questioned him on it, playfully and then, pointedly.
Just remember that.Īs the sessions continued and the day of presentation drew near, Churchill grew more apprehensive. The highest ideals of government and leadership. You’re painting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and everything that great office represents. Just concentrate on the good, and all will be well. When Sutherland gently insists that the artist’s call is to draw out and represent the good as well as the bad, Churchill huffs: One has to turn a blind eye to so much of oneself in order to get through life. I find in general people have very little understanding of who they are. Could he give advice to Sutherland to better represent his finer points? Could he help him shave of the bad and smooth over rough edges? After all, Churchill would remind: In another scene, not allowed to see the portrait in the making, Churchill would badger with a touch of anxious anticipation.
The real humanizes, humbles and assures says the other. The ideal inspires, leads and ennobles says one. Sutherland, on the other hand, feels there is mercy in tenderly surrendering to the inevitable truths (warts, Churchill may call them) of age, that our heroes are human, and that proud ideals are more easily approached when we sense their accompanying twinges of sadness and musty decay. And the stroke of an artist’s brush, if not assiduously coaxed, may tell this story without mercy. He fears that, in spite of his continued hold on the Prime Minister’s position, his power is increasingly ceremonial and phantom…that his age has defeated him. Painting is the higher art.Ĭhurchill recognizes not only has his body tired, mind slowed and weight climbed, but moreover that his indispensable role as the roaring lion of 1940 has passed.
80TH BIRTHDAY WINSTON CHURCHILL PAINTING SERIES
What actually transpired in the sessions held between Graham Sutherland and Winston Churchill is surely lost to history, but the Netflix series ( The Crown) about Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill does its level best to poignantly help us to imagine.Ĭhurchill: No. And so, Churchill’s interest in a flattering remembrance of “his finest hour” was quite keen. Though Sutherland was aware of the mettle of which Churchill was still made, it was clear that the Prime Minister had aged appreciably with accustomed weight gain and physical frailties. Graham Sutherland was deemed worthy and subsequently charged with artistically immortalizing the iconic victor of World War II. Serving his second term as Great Britain’s Prime Minister, both Houses of Parliament raised a large sum of money to secure the skills of a celebrated artist. The occasion for the portrait was Churchill’s 80th birthday. He was asked to paint a portrait of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The bulldog wasn’t sure he trusted this modern artist.įor in 1954, Graham Sutherland had accepted a sizable commission. Impatiently, he shifted from one foot to the other. Cigar champed between his teeth, his eyes periodically glowering when they were not searching the artist’s face and hands. His subject stood dressed in his stately parliamentary attire. That riveting scene-which starts with a simple goldfish pond and ends in manly, restrained tears-is exactly the kind of thing that makes The Crown such refreshingly restrained-yet-irresistible television.The artist was standing before a bulldog. This series prefers, instead, the slow burn of that two-hander sequence between Lithgow’s enfeebled Churchill and Dillane’s probing Sutherland. The episode ends with Clementine’s official story-that she burned it all on her own.īut even if Morgan did know all the facts, The Crown isn’t really one for capers anyway. In 1978, when Sutherland discovered the painting had been burned, he called it “without question an act of vandalism.”Īnother writer might have latched on to the drama of a middle-of-the-night painting bonfire, but it’s possible Morgan-who has been working on The Crown since at least 2014-didn’t know about the Hamblin caper when he wrote his script. When Hamblin came back to tell her boss what she had done, Churchill’s formidable wife said, “You did exactly as I would have wanted.” Clementine-who worked very hard to preserve her husband’s legacy both during his career and after his death-took the blame for the portrait going missing and claimed she burned it herself.
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