In an age of instant Telstar TV images and photojournalism, the role of portraiture, once a mainstay of the painter's profession, often seems to have fallen by the wayside. But when Parliament decided to honor Winston Church ill on his 80th birthday, it instinctively turned to one of England's finest artists, Graham Sutherland. Churchill loathed the result, kept the oil hidden away. Still, when Churchill died, the public turned to Sutherland's image, saw in its pugnacious, bulldog mien the true essence of their wartime leader.
One of man's greatest challenges is facing himself; in today's portraiture the encounter has become...