# - Churchill, Sir Winston.

head and shoulders, Churchill dressed in his wartime siren suit, oil on board, 600 x 500mm., overall size in frame 775 x 670mm., 1955

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, when appropriate.
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the artist chosen by churchill himself after his rejection of the graham sutherland portrait.

In 1954 Sutherland painted Churchill, but Churchill loathed the painting. In response he chose Bernard Hailstone as his preferred artist and this intimate portrait is one of the results.

At 10 Downing Street Churchill is said to have declared to Hailstone, "Sutherland made me look like some half-dead thing! I'm not some half-dead thing!" It is also reported that Churchill thought that the Sutherland portrait made him look "half-witted, which I ain't!"

Bernard Hailstone (1910-87), a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and whose subjects included Laurence Olivier, Sir John Barbirolli and Peter Ustinov, was Churchill's tutor in painting. During these sessions the tutor painted his pupil at Chartwell in 1955, producing a series of rare portraits of churchill from life. Although Hailstone paints Churchill informally, the portrait captures the essence of Churchill's indomitable spirit and intelligence, defiant in spite of age.

Hailstone was an official war artist and witnessed some of the worst bombing of the Blitz, the results of which he recorded by setting up his easel in the bombed remains of churches and other buildings between raids. He also depicted Atlantic and Mediterranean convoys and painted Lord Mountbatten and his staff in South East Asia Command. Much of his wartime work is now in the Imperial War Museum.

The present portrait depicts Churchill in one of his favourite wartime siren suits, which were originally designed to enable the statesman to retain a measure of comfort without forfeiting his formal authority while working ferociously long hours during the Battle of Britain (see lot 133, Sotheby's sale of English Literature and History,  12 December 2002). A similar suit was worn by him whilst sitting for the sculptor Oscar Nemon in the 1950s (see p.65, same catalogue).