The picture featured in Radio 4’s arts programme Front Row, BBC television’s 10pm news, early evening ITV news, local radio and two daily broadsheets.
It is a 1954 oil depicting Churchill not long after he suffered a stroke, and will be the highlight of a loan exhibition at the fair celebrating the centenary of Sutherland’s birth and curated by Angus Stewart. Studies for this portrait were made in the same sittings that resulted in the starkly realistic portrait of Churchill that so depressed the great man it was infamously destroyed by his wife Clementine.
This 20in by 2ft (51 x 61cm) portrait from a private collection has not been seen in public for more than two decades and has been described by some critics as the finest surviving painting of Churchill.
The artist himself rated the work and when he sold a number of Churchill works to Lord Beaverbrook he kept this one and at some stage gave it to his wife.
Churchill Portrait
The Spring Fine Art & Antiques Fair at Olympia, which will be held in London from February 25 to March 2, has received a record amount of publicity thanks to this Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) portrait of Churchill, right.
