It's not just British royal portraits making the rounds: last April, Sotheby's announced that a study for a Winston Churchill portrait was scheduled to go on auction. The work was made by Graham Sutherland, whose portrait of the Prime Minister was intensely disliked by its subject. This was famously depicted in the television series, The Crown, which shows Churchill railing against Sutherland. Expected to fetch between £500,000 and £800,000, the study was sold for £660,000 last June 7.
Sutherland-known for his abstract landscapes, as well as his portraits of public figures-was commissioned by the Houses of Parliament to paint Churchill for his 80th birthday in 1954. Churchill was popular as Prime Minister during the Second World War. He did not fare as well during his second term, however, and so was particularly conscious of how he was portrayed. He thought the portrait "filthy and malignant," and did not attend the public ceremony. Instead of being hung in parliament, it was hidden away in his home in Kent, and destroyed within a year. Its final disappearance was masterminded by Churchill's secretary, Grace Hamblin, who asked her brother to burn the painting. A copy still resides at the Carlton club in London.
The oil-on-canvas study was one of many that Sutherland made in preparation for the painting. Sutherland kept the work, which he then gave to the framer Albert Hetch, who then bequeathed it to a member of the Ogilvy family, who put the work up for auction. It was last shown in public in 1982.
André Zlattinger, head of modern British and Irish art at Sotheby's, describes the study not as "a formal, but an intimate portrayal. Churchill is caught in a moment of absent-minded thoughtfulness."
Sotheby's adds: "The work demonstrates a thoughtful vulnerability and an insight into the depth of the unlikely friendship that blossomed between the two men during this period."
