After his well-received portrait of Maugham, he was chosen to depict Churchill, a portrait that was intended to hang in Parliament after the prime minister’s death, a portrait that would preserve a legacy. The portrait that would define Sutherland’s artistic career belonged to neither of these men, however it belonged to Winston Churchill.

This gives an almost unfinished aesthetic. The paint is applied more thinly, so thin, in fact, that his pencil lines can be seen underneath. This work is typical of Sutherland’s later style. There is a sense that this powerful and influential man has been reduced to a figure that is tangibly real. There is a sense of relatability in Goodman’s portrait, which, perhaps, he did not achieve with Maugham. Goodman’s portrait is arguably much less flattering than Maugham’s, who is presented as tall and elegant, despite his age. It is these distinct facial features that, to him, define a sitter. He does not flinch from depicting crow’s feet or double chins. Sutherland captures at once the best and worst of his sitters. This portrait is honest, perhaps a little too honest. The square-shaped canvas emphasizes the man’s body shape and the large amount of blank space at the top of the canvas dwarves him to the effect of making him seem short. While gravitas is certainly awarded to the sitter, we cannot escape the lack of flattery Sutherland gives to Goodman. There is a starkness in his expression and a determination in the way he looks unflinchingly forward. The painting reflects this in its placated colour palette and its profoundly stoic quality there is a sense of order and logic. Unlike with Maugham, Sutherland was confronted with a sitter who was not a writer or a creative, but a lawyer. This approach is mirrored in Sutherland’s portrait of Lord Goodman. The portrait is a distinct one, cementing Sutherland’s place in artistic circles. The first portrait Sutherland was ever commissioned to paint was that of Somerset Maugham – a novelist and playwright who was perhaps most known for his novel, Of Human Bondage.

Emerging from this small incident of taste and misinterpretation is doubt as to the function of a portrait artist – to flatter or to present the reality of his sitter. The portrait that he will create will be destroyed in the coming years, ill-received by its subject and those who desired to uphold his undeniable legacy it will be labelled as a “disgusting” depiction of a great man. The sitter is Winston Churchill and the man deemed fit for the task of painting him is Graham Sutherland. Every year of his life seems to be marked by a wrinkle on his face and the cigar in his right hand looks almost too heavy to hold. He is old, weakened by numerous strokes and prostrated by a decade of war and strikes. He is presented with his sitter, a familiar man with a familiar face and a reputation larger than that of any other man in the country. An artist is commissioned to paint a man in 1954.

Churchill portrait