Face values
Simon Schama’s The Face of Britain DVD (BBC/Spirit Entertainment, £19.99, released 19 October)
To look at British portraiture, says Simon Schama in a preamble to his latest series, is akin to “combing through the family album of our nation”. But “be warned”, he cautions, we can’t take the faces we see at “face value”. Instead, our ideas about some of the most famous images from our history rest on the interplay between sitter, artist and the Great British public, as we collectively pass opinions on these artworks.
This interplay can be complex. In Power and Portraiture – the first of five themed documentaries – Schama tells the story of Graham Sutherland’s 1954 portrait of Churchill. Recovering from a stroke, Churchill wanted a “proclamation of his undimmed vigour”. Sutherland gave him “a picture of the rugged truth… an obituary in paint”. Churchill, who acidly called the picture “a remarkable example of modern art”, hated the painting and it was destroyed. It’s just one of the stories told with élan in a series that, in combining his art historian’s eye for detail, sharp turn of phrase and gift for big narratives, represents some of Schama’s best television work since the History of Britain.