![]() 2.2 Winston Churchill at his 80th birthday reception being presented with his. One MP called the portrait “a study in lumbago,” and Lord Hailsham said it was “disgusting, ill-mannered, terrible.” Churchill accepted the gift with a measured good humor, but privately he muttered, “It makes me look half-witted, which I ain’t.” After the unveiling, the painting was never seen again - shortly before Churchill’s death, his wife had it cut up and burned. He went on to live for another decade but alas his birthday portrait had a. “The artist had obviously been unhappy about them and they had been painted over since it would have been impossible to ‘cut off’ his legs below the knees without radically altering the proportions and placing of the picture on the canvas.” “Its chief defect was that it looked unfinished in as much as his feet were concealed in a carpet that seemed to have sprouted a dun-coloured grass,” wrote Studio editor G.S. Winston Churchill detested the 80th birthday portrait commissioned as a gift by the Houses of Parliament in 1954 and painted by Graham Sutherland, which depicted him as an ageing man. 3 Finding the depiction deeply unflattering, Churchill disliked the portrait intensely. The painting, by Graham Sutherland, was a decidedly modern take on the octogenarian statesman. A remarkable example of modern art growled Churchill in the Westminster Hall when the grateful parliament presented him with a portrait for his 80th birthday in 1954, soliciting laughter from his audience, It certainly combines force and candor, the aging prime minister added. The painting was presented to Churchill by both Houses of Parliament at a public ceremony in Westminster Hall on his 80th birthday on 30 November 1954. The ceremony took place before a crowded Westminster Hall, and no one present, one observer said, “will forget the idiosyncratic nonsound with which a thousand people stopped breathing when the canvas was revealed.” Winston Churchill 18741965 British Conservative statesman. ![]() In London, both Houses of Parliament have assembled in Westminster Hall to celebrate the occasion. 30 November 1954 The scene is familiar to students of Churchill’s life. Winston Churchill faced an awkward moment in 1954, when Parliament unveiled a portrait on the occasion of his 80th birthday. on the notorious 80th birthday portrait by Graham Sutherland, later destroyed by Lady Churchill. By DAVE TURRELL SeptemThe short-lived Sutherland portrait, 1954. ![]()
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