'I look like a down-and-out drunk who has been picked out of the gutter in the Strand'
A very rare, and signed, portrait of Britain's most famous Prime Minister is about to go up for auction - and could attract an eyewatering sum.
Trevillion was inspired to paint a smiling Churchill after the former PM bitterly complained about a portrait by artist Graham Sutherland a year earlier.Churchill famously hated Sutherland's painting which had been commissioned for his 80th birthday showing him slumped in a chair and staring blankly ahead. On seeing the painting, he told his private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne, "I look like a down-and-out drunk who has been picked out of the gutter in the Strand.
The artist, from Tottenham, North London, plans to donate some of the proceeds of the auction to charities. He recalled challenging himself to create a painting of Churchill after Sutherland's portrait fiasco. The portrait was presented to Churchill, who was then retired, by his friend, Bernard Sunley, with the help of designer Lazslo Hoenig.
"When I walked into the room, Churchill was seated. He put out his hand. I went to shake it, and he held it. He said he was expecting someone much older. He asked if I'd been evacuated in the war, which I hadn't. 'You're a boy from the Blitz.'"
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