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Category: Clementine Churchill

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When the artist likes his subject

I’m studying Francis Cadell before a portrait commission takes me to his home town.
Portrait of a Lady in Black, c. 1921, Francis Cadell, courtesy National Gallery of Scotland.
Winston Churchill hated his state portrait, painted by Graham Vivian Sutherland. It so rankled that his widow, Clementine Churchill, had her secretary burn it more than a decade after his death. That’s the fate of a portrait that pisses everyone off. It must have felt like a stinging rebuke to Sutherland, who was blameless.
Sutherland was not primarily a portrait artist, but a tapestry designer and landscape painter. He thoroughly embraced modernism. There are some artists who could combine that with warmth, but for most of the 20thcentury, modernism was coupled with cool disdain. Sutherland’s portraits, mainly done in the 1950s, are icily insightful. Many illustrious people sat for him, so he was a logical choice for the parliamentarians who commissioned the painting. Sutherland was fashionable.
Interior, The Orange Blind, c. 1914, by Francis Cadell, courtesy Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Unless Cadell was on a ladder, this is an imagined viewpoint.
Another painter who did portraits as part of a larger ouevre was the Scottish Colourist Francis Cadell. He was skilled at still life, interiors, and plein air landscapes. He was also a portrait painter in his native Edinburgh. Unlike Sutherland’s, his portraits are sympathetic. They tie their subjects to what interested him most—the house and furnishings that provided the setting.
Lesser thinkers might have made a cynical statement about materialism, and in more sophisticated cities, that would have been lapped up. However, there’s absolutely no condescension in Cadell’s worldview. He is as interested in interiors as they are. As an artist, he comes across as a thoroughly nice man.
The Parting, c. 1915, Francis Cadell, courtesy National Gallery of Scotland.
Cadell was the only Colourist to serve in the Great War. Before he was sent to the Front, he did a series of drawings in ink and watercolor. These are fast, witty drawings built on graphic design and splashes of color.
His later paintings worked off the same idea. He created meticulous, exciting value compositions in white, cream and black, and shot them through with highlights of bold color. That color was often red.
I’m studying Cadell because I’m going to Scotland next Spring. I’ll do a portrait, in a home on the next street to where Cadell lived and worked for nearly 12 years. He painted his Portrait of a Lady in Black, above, in his Ainslie Place studio. As with so many of his paintings, it’s as much a portrait of a place as of a woman. In fact, the model, Bertia Don Wauchope, was not a client at all, but his regular model.
We read the shape between the fan and her torso first, because it’s the highest contrast in the painting. Rapidly, though, we begin to see the spaces defined in mauve, and the reflection of her great hat in the mirror. It’s a stunning monochromatic composition alleviated only by the pink of that ridiculous flower and a slash of lipstick. And yet there’s nothing dehumanized about it.
The Vase of Water, 1922, Francis Cadell. His studio had mauve walls, so it’s an indication that the painting was done there.
The key to Cadell’s portraits are, in fact, his still lives. He ruthlessly reduced detail and shadow into blocks of brilliant color. Their main purpose was to provide a brilliantly faceted abstract framework. And yet there is a casualness to them that make them plausible moments stolen from life.
Sticking an international trip into my summer schedule is impossible, so I plan to go in May, as soon as the weather warms enough to paint outdoors. A side trip to Ionaseems inevitable. After all, that’s where I first met Cadell and the other Colourists. This time, I’m bringing my oils.
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The client hates the painting

A grateful nation wanted to honor Sir Winston Churchill for his remarkable service. The painting they commissioned was regrettably unsympathetic.
Sir Winston Churchill, by Graham Sutherland
In 1954, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was winding up his second term of office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was one of the most brilliant men of any age: a leader, a soldier, an historian, a writer, and along with all that, a skilled painter. Where he could have gone with an art career had he not been busy saving Western Civilization is anyone’s guess.
Mary’s first speech, by Winston Churchill
Wishing to honor him, the joint Houses of Parliament commissioned a portrait painting by another polymath, Graham Vivian Sutherland. Sutherland was a printmaker, a textile designer, a wartime artist, and a portraitist of some note. He was also known as a modernist, which ought to have struck a warning bell. For all his complexity and brilliance, Churchill was deeply orthodox.
Sutherland was paid 1000 guineas. This needs explaining. The guinea had been officially removed from circulation more than a hundred years earlier. However, luxury goods like art, couturier clothing, horses, and fine furniture were quoted in guineas right through the late 20th century. A guinea was 21 shillings, and that equaled about $35,000 in today’s money. The fee was paid entirely by donations from members of the joint Houses.
W. Somerset Maugham, by Graham Sutherland
To date, Sutherland’s most famous portrait commission had been of the writer W. Somerset Maugham. Sutherland’s fans thought him honest; others considering him cold. In retrospect, his portraits seem almost to be caricatures.
Churchill wanted to be shown in the chivalric robes of the Order of the Garter. However, the commission specified that he be shown in his usual parliamentary dress.
Abraham Lincoln, by Daniel Chester French
Sutherland was methodical in his preparation. He traveled to the Churchill home, Chartwell, to make charcoal and oil studies, doing the final work in his studio. The pose was meant to quote Daniel Chester French’s monumental portrait of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial. However, in its odd miasma of dreary monochrome, Sutherland’s painting was oddly unheroic. It was just an old man, struggling out of his chair.
That was a bad note to strike, even if it did resonate with the nation’s own sense of exhaustion. Unknown to the public, Churchill had recently had a stroke. He was feeling sensitive about his health.
Clementine Churchill brought a photograph of the completed portrait back to her husband ten days before the public ceremony at Westminster. Churchill hated it, calling it “filthy” and “malignant”. His fellow Conservative Charles Doughty convinced him that he had to accept it, since rejecting it would offend the donors.
In his speech, Churchill, ever the wit, described the likeness as “a remarkable example of modern art.” Although it was intended to hang in Parliament, Churchill immediately took it back to Chartwell with him, where it was stashed away.
Lord Goodman, by Graham Sutherland
In 1978, it was revealed that Lady Churchill had asked her secretary to destroy the painting. Grace Hamblin was the Churchill’s loyal private secretary for more than 40 years. She and her brother burned the painting on a large bonfire in the back garden of his house.
Biographer Sonia Purnell has described Lady Churchill as “ruthless” in protecting her late husband’s legacy. Because the painting didn’t represent her own image of her husband, “it had to go.” That disregards the fact that he hated it as much as she.
Sutherland later described the disposal of the portrait as an “act of vandalism.” Certainly no artist wants to see their work destroyed, but in the end a painting is an object, a possession, and the owner has the right to destroy it.