The first draft of a Winston Churchill portrait so despised by the wartime prime minister that it was later burnt is set to be sold for the first time.
For his 80th birthday, Churchill received thousands of gifts from around the world, including a commemorative portrait commissioned by Parliament.
Churchill despised the finished birthday gift so much – believing it made him look “like a down-and-out drunk” – that the painting was burned by his staff in an act of destruction later immortalised in an episode of The Crown.
However, an early study for the detested image was passed on to the Ogilvy family, distant relatives of the King, and this surviving work will now be auctioned by Sotheby’s on June 6.
The family’s preparatory painting for the hated work is the first piece from the infamous portrait sitting to reach auction, and is valued at around £800,000.
Churchill wanted portrait to make him look ‘noble’
Marking 150 years since Churchill’s birth, this study will be put on public display in the room in which he was born at Blenheim Palace.
Andre Zlattinger, a Sotheby’s expert, has suggested that Churchill “quite possibly” would have preferred the rough study to the eventual and hated finished portrait, saying: “He had seen some studies and was quite excited by the portrait.”
He added: “He was quite vain about his image, he had had a stroke in 1953, and there were quite a lot of articles in the press about how he was being perceived.”
Graham Sutherland, a celebrated painter of abstract landscapes and portraits, was chosen by Parliament to create the painting of Churchill in time for his 80th birthday in 1954.
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