ID: 2598
Autograph letter signed, to Max Aitken, First Baron Beaverbrook, regarding the author's portrait of Winston Churchill
SUTHERLAND, Graham
Category: Art
Place/Publisher/Date:
West Malling, Kent, No Publisher. 1961.
Description:
Autograph letter signed Graham, to Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, West Malling, Kent. Four pages, addressed 'My Dear Max Letters to the author's friend and patron, the newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook. His 1954 portrait of Winston Churchill, loathed by the sitter himself who complained that it made him "look like a down-and-out drunk who has been picked out of the gutter in the Strand". Sutherland writes 'I note from my 'Standard' & Daily Express that in your recent television appearance you expressed belief that Nye Bevan influenced my handling of the form the portrait eventually too.' 'I can't emphasise strongly enough that this is not the truth. Churchill 'asked the first morning "How will you paint me - as a cherub or the Bull Dog?" I replied "It entirely depends what you show me sir." 'He showed me the Bull Dog!! During the Second world war Churchill's most determined and formidable critic was the ardent socialist, Nye Bevan, MP for Ebbw Vale since 1929 and throughout his career a brilliant speaker. He dissected the shortcomings of the government's war strategy in an extremely effective and well-informed manner. No other critic of it marshalled such telling arguments or expounded them so eloquently. Churchill called Bevan "a squalid nuisance." There is however little evidence to suppose that Bevan had any influence over the portrait as Sutherland states in the letter there was no contact between the two.
Price £1000.00
