Andre Zlattinger, Sotheby’s head of Modern British and Irish Art poses with a portrait, a surviving study of Winston Churchill, at Blenheim Palace, north of Oxford, home to the Duke of Marlborough and Churchill’s family home, yesterday.
One of the best surviving portraits of Winston Churchill has gone on show in the former British prime minister’s birthplace, ahead of going under the hammer in June, Sotheby’s announced. The painting of the World War II leader by artist Graham Sutherland, part of a commission to mark Churchill’s 80th birthday in 1954, is on display at Blenheim Palace until Sunday. The painting went on public view yesterday in the very room where Churchill was born in 1874 at the Oxfordshire home of the Churchill family, according to Sotheby’s. It will also go on display at the auction house’s New York premises for two weeks in early May and at its London showroom from May 25 to June 5, before being offered for sale on June 6. Sotheby’s estimates it will fetch up to $996,000. “Focused solely on the head, Sutherland pours his energies into a dextrous, painterly analysis of the man during an incomparably challenging period of his life,” the auctioneers said.