Sutherland's Churchill
Sir: Owing to absence abroad I have only recently seen this correspondence (5 and 12 June), Comparatively few of those who commented can have seen the picture except briefly or in reproduction. Whether it was `simply a damn bad painting', as Mr Pyke suggests, I do not feel qualified to say. What is clear, however, is that it did not live up to its purpose which was really that of a State painting, where a historical record is more important than the personal quirks and pirouettes of the artist.
It was not a pleasant picture and there is a certain sameness in Mr Sutherland's por- trayal of his subjects. One of them, the late Lord Beaverbrook, said: 'The fellow's a caricaturist,' and of the portrait of Mr Somerset Maugham: 'He looks as though he had died under torture.' The fault perhaps lies with those who selected Mr Sutherland to execute the work.
A. A. D. Montague Browne
99a Prince of Wales Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive, London SW11
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