In Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" there is a famous sentence: "Manuscripts don't burn" that means "Art is immortal". But do paintings burn?
Recently I was watching a show "Crown" about the Queen Elizabeth. It is very good show and I highly recommend it. One episode impressed me much as I am fond of art.
First of all, I learnt that Winston Churchill had painted. And his paintings were very very good. He started to paint after he turned 40.
In the movie they say that Churchill painted about 20 paintings of the same pond near the house they bought after the death of one of their daughters. It was assumed that constant painting of that pond connected with the grief for his daughter.
Another line impressed me in the movie - a story about the portrait of Winston. All the facts I mention here are taken from the movie, so I don't pretend all of them are true. After the movie I really want to know more about this outstanding person and to compare his biography and the facts described in the movie.
Winston was an admired and honored person. But as he was holding the post of the Prime - Minister being at his 80th, no doubts there were many people who wanted him to resign. From the movie I understood that he hadn't resigned not because he had been greedy for power but because he had been such a patriot and had worried about his country. He didn't see the appropriate candidate for that position. And even being badly sick his main concern was his country but not himself.
Anyway, there were many people who wanted him to leave the post. The Parliament and the Cabinet of the Ministers ordered a portrait of Churchill from a famous artist Graham Vivian Sutherland who was also known as a very very realistic portraitist. Sutherland asked how Winston wanted him to paint as a bulldog or a cherubim. Winston chose a bulldog.
Winston Churchill was posing to the artist and they had kinda connection. They discussed a lot including Winston's art.
I think the Parliament members and Ministers ordered that portrait on purpose. They could foresee the reaction of Churchill to that portrait.
Churchill got a portrait for his 80th birthday at a large ceremony at Westminster Hall and he was very very disappointed and even shocked when he saw that. He called it "a remarkable example of modern art" but he and his family hated that portrait.
In the movie he took the portrait home and burnt it there. After that Winston Churchill resigned.
In the internet I found the information that his wife burnt the portrait after Winston's death (or it was burnt upon her order). Only sketches stayed and some of them are kept in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The painting was supposed to hang in Westminster Abbey after Churchill’s death.
Sutherland called it as “an act of vandalism” and the portrait was described as “lost masterpiece”.
Sources:
http://w-s-churchill.livejournal.com/97491.html
http://lifeglobe.net/photos/art-utracheny/cherchill
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/winston-churchill/11730850/Secret-of-Winston-Churchills-unpopular-Sutherland-portrait-revealed.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/21/winston-churchill-and-his-wife-hated-his-portrait-so-much-she-destroyed-it.html
http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/732478/the-crown-netflix-winston-churchill-john-lithgow-portrait-painting-stroke-queen-real-life