![]() ![]() Privately, he called the portrait malignant and had it cut up and burned. When Graham Sutherland’s painting was unveiled before Parliament, benefactors and Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister was mortified. The brushstrokes painted images of ideal beauty, yet very real woe. Their art served as an outlet that both obscured and revealed the depths of their despair. For a moment, they were unlikely brothers. That was when. I put in the pond.įor a moment, in grief, the artist and the bulldog understood one another. We bought Chartwell a year after Marigold died. When I came home, Clemmie roared like a wounded animal. Regretfully, but though perhaps mercifully, I was not present when she died. Sutherland: I was thinking especially of the goldfish pond here at Chartwell.Ĭhurchill: We settled on the name Marigold, on account of her wonderful golden curls. Well, are there any works that you’re referring to in particular? But I do take comfort from the fact that your own work is so honest and revealing.Ĭhurchill: Oh, thank you for the compliment. 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. 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. The artist was standing before a bulldog. ![]()
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