Page 383 - The Secret Museum

minister, in Chartwell. Sutherland took all of the sketches back to his studio and

probably pinned them onto the canvas as he worked, creating his portrait in oil paint.

However, somehow the magic of the sketches can’t have translated into the
painting for when Churchill was presented with the final, lifesize portrait of himself
he was furious. He said it made him look ‘halfwitted’. However, he graciously,
perhaps with gritted teeth, went along with the MPs’ desire to present the offending
item to him as a birthday gift on 30 November 1954, in Parliament. The prime
minister said wryly: ‘The portrait is a remarkable example of modern art. It certainly
combines force and candour …’ He took it home with him, and the painting

disappeared. It is generally thought that, after it had hung around their house annoying
everyone and upsetting Churchill, his wife threw it on a bonfire in their garden.

Only the sketches and two preparatory studies in oil still survive. One of the oils
is on display in the gallery and the other is hanging in the Churchill War Rooms,
among other treasures belonging to Churchill – speeches, letters to his wife
Clementine, a cigar and his red velvet ‘Siren Suit’, which is a precursor to a onesie;
he had several of these made in Savile Row, in different colours, and loved to wear
them as they were so comfortable.

The oils and sketches were found lying around Sutherland’s studio when he died

in 1980, 28 years after he created them in 1952. Perhaps he kept them for sentimental
reasons, or maybe he just hadn’t got around to clearing out his studio in a long while,
but luckily his wife donated them to the gallery.

I went to see them at the National Portrait Gallery’s prints and drawings storage
on Orange Street in London. An underground tunnel filled with framing studios links
the building with the gallery itself. All of the collection’s prints and drawings that
aren’t currently on exhibition are in here, in controlled conditions inside green boxes,
in drawers and stacked against the side of the wall. The sculptures and oil paintings

are kept in Southwark.
Tim and his colleague, Rab MacGibbon, who is the gallery’s associate curator,

pulled the three sketches of Churchill, and one sketchbook that also belonged to
Sutherland, out of their different green boxes and spread them out on top of a chest of
drawers.

We looked at the sketchbook first. Sutherland had ripped a lot of the pages out, but
a few quick sketches of Churchill’s left arm remain. The sketchbook was a tool; in
the pages Sutherland began to work out the angles of his portrait. It was interesting to
see his brain in action, try ing out ideas on the page.

Once he’d nailed it, he moved onto the next sketch, beside it, a full study of a
hand, in pencil and ink. It has criss-cross pencil lines across the page, which was

useful for scaling the study up in size later on. Sutherland probably pinned this one
onto his canvas to work from as he painted.
The third sketch I looked at is the one I really like. It’s a sketch in chalk, of