Sutherland's Portrait of Winston Churchill Sutherland, and Harriet Walter as Lady Churchill. The episode won Lithgow a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Sutherland's Portrait of Winston Churchill In 1954 the English artist Graham Sutherland was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. The 1,000 guinea fee for the painting was funded by donations from members of the House of Commons and House of Lords. The painting was presented to Churchill by both Houses of Parliament at a public ceremony in Westminster Hall on his 80th birthday on 30 November 1954. Churchill hated the portrait. After the
Sutherland's Portrait of Winston Churchill and having them incinerated, to avoid causing further distress to her husband. Lady Churchill had destroyed earlier portraits of her husband that she disliked, including sketches by Walter Sickert and Paul Maze. In fact, Lady Churchill had hidden the portrait in the cellars at Chartwell, and employed her private secretary Grace Hamblin and Hamblin's brother to remove it in the middle of the night and burn it in a remote location. Many commentators were aghast at the destruction of a work of art, and Sutherland condemned it as an act of vandalism; others upheld the Churchills' right to dispose of