In 1954, Graham Sutherland was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, that was presented to Churchill at a public ceremony on his eightieth birthday. Sutherland was a modernist painter with a reputation for capturing the "real" side of his subjects. Instead of depicting Churchill as stately, Sutherland painted him as he truly looked, and apparently neither Churchill nor his wife liked the painting.
After the public presentation in 1954, the painting was taken to his country home at Chartwell but was never displayed. It wasn't until Lady Churchill died in 1977 that the truth was discovered; she had destroyed the painting shortly after it was delivered.
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