The Churchill portrait his wife had destroyed

British portraiture after 1945

This room brings together portraits painted between the 1940s and 1960s, at a time when the genre reinvented itself under the influence of expressionism and a new generation of London painters — Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach — who broke with flattering likeness in favour of a psychological truth that could be brutal. Painting, bronze and stained glass sit side by side here: painters were not the only ones redefining the genre.

1. A birthday gift burned within the year

The portrait of Winston Churchill by Graham Sutherland was given to the prime minister by both houses of the British Parliament, at a public ceremony in Westminster Hall for his eightieth birthday, on 30 November 1954. Churchill, finding the result merciless, publicly called it a "remarkable example of modern art" with an ironic smile, before privately describing it as "filthy" and complaining that it made him "look half-witted."

The painting disappeared within the year following its presentation. For a long time it was believed that Lady Churchill herself had had it destroyed; more recent biographical research, based on a recording of Clementine Churchill's former secretary, Grace Hamblin, shows that it was Hamblin who arranged the painting's destruction, at the quiet request of a Clementine Churchill "very disturbed" by her husband's distress. The original painting therefore no longer exists; only preparatory studies and photographs preserve any trace of it.

2. Bacon paints Freud: three studies, a small format

Francis Bacon paints in 1964 a small triptych, Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud — each panel measures only around 35 by 30 centimetres — documenting the complex friendship between the two painters, who had known and influenced each other since the 1940s. This work should not be confused with a different, larger and later triptych (1969), also devoted to Freud, which sold at auction in 2013 for around $142 million: these are two distinct paintings, not to be mixed up despite their near-identical titles.

The 1964 version shown here is a long-term loan from a private collection, not a permanent acquisition of the gallery — a useful detail if you are hoping to see it again on a future visit.

3. Beecham and Fonteyn, two legends of the British stage in bust form

The bronze head of Sir Thomas Beecham by David Wynne, made in 1957, captures the conductor and founder of the London Philharmonic and then the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra four years before his death in 1961. Wynne separately cast bronzes of Beecham's hands, kept alongside the head — a way of capturing, beyond the face, the very gesture of conducting.

The bronze bust of Margot Fonteyn by Maurice Lambert, made in 1956, is a preparatory study for a life-size sculpture now on loan to the Royal Ballet School. Fonteyn, prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, was then at the height of a career that had begun in the 1930s — one of the most celebrated ballerinas in British history.

4. Heron and Boty, the self-portrait as manifesto

Patrick Heron's Self-Portrait, painted in 1951, comes a year after the gallery acquired his portraits of T. S. Eliot (1949) and Herbert Read (1950). Heron applies his own theory of pictorial "distortion" — the way a painter transforms the physical world rather than copying it — building the painting's space out of gestural lines and flat areas of colour, applied sometimes thickly, sometimes as a thin glaze.

Pauline Boty's Self-Portrait in stained glass, made around 1958 while she was a student in the stained glass department at the Royal College of Art, is the only work in glass in the entire National Portrait Gallery collection. Boty, who would become one of the few recognised women of British Pop art, had been discouraged from studying painting — seen at the time as too difficult a career for a woman — and turned first to stained glass before establishing herself, a few years later, as a painter.

5. The royal family at tea, a minister and a novelist

Conversation piece at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, painted in 1950 by Sir James Gunn (oil on canvas, about 151 × 100 cm), shows King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister Princess Margaret at tea-time. Throughout the Second World War the Royal Family remained in London; in this post-war portrait, the informality of the presentation, for which the Queen was responsible, was entirely new, and it shows changing perceptions of the monarchy. Gunn, chosen by the King and Queen, recalled the difficulty of placing the corgi, moving it about on the canvas as a paper cut-out. The work was commissioned to hang in a public collection.

The bronze head of Aneurin Bevan, by Peter Lambda (1974, based on a work of 1945, 45 cm high), recalls the man who oversaw the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948, as Minister of Health, nationalising hospitals and providing free medical treatment for all. A Welsh miner who became involved in union politics as a teenager, a leading figure in the 1926 General Strike and later Labour MP for Ebbw Vale, he embodies the Welfare State born of Labour’s 1945 victory.

The bronze bust of J.B. Priestley, by Maurice Lambert (1948, 41.5 cm high), shows one of the most popular novelists of the 1920s and 1930s, from a working-class background and a prominent figure on the left. Early in the Second World War he presented a BBC radio show, Postscripts, reflecting on the war effort while considering a fairer post-war society; his plays, such as An Inspector Calls (1945), promoted social conscience. He described himself as a grumbler: ‘I am designed for the part, for I have a sagging face, a weighty underlip …’

How much time

Nine works in a single room: allow about an hour to see them all; about fifteen minutes is enough for the two most striking stories, the destroyed Churchill portrait and Bacon's triptych.

Background on British portraiture after 1945 — 5 minutes.
The destroyed Churchill portrait (studies and photographs) — 8 minutes.
Three Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud (Bacon) — 8 minutes.
Sir Thomas Beecham (bust, David Wynne) — 6 minutes.
Margot Fonteyn (bust, Maurice Lambert) — 6 minutes.
Self-Portrait (Patrick Heron) — 6 minutes.
Self-Portrait in stained glass (Pauline Boty) — 6 minutes.
Conversation piece at the Royal Lodge (Gunn) — 8 minutes.
Aneurin Bevan (bronze head, Peter Lambda) — 4 minutes.
J.B. Priestley (bust, Maurice Lambert) — 4 minutes.

Sources and verification

Checked against the official notices of the National Portrait Gallery (npg.org.uk) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the National Portrait Gallery website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Continue your visit

National Portrait Gallery, London

The portrait that invented royal propaganda Elizabeth I’s Ditchley portrait, and Holbein’s Thomas Cromwell. The faces of the Enlightenment Newton, Locke, Swift and Hogarth in a single room.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.