At the age of 90, and with a successful career as a sports artist under his belt, there is one work of which Paul Trevillion is particularly proud. Perhaps surprisingly, it isn’t among his portraits of legendary stars such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Pelé, Muhammad Ali, George Best, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.
It is an image of another of Trevillion’s heroes: a pen-and-ink drawing of Winston Churchill created in 1955, and carrying a rare signature of the UK’s wartime leader.
Now, to mark the 80th anniversary of D-day in June and the 150th anniversary of Churchill’s birth in November, Trevillion has decided to auction the portrait. He hopes it will fetch more than £1m, the sum it was insured for when it went on display in 2017 at the National Football Museum in Manchester. Some of the proceeds will go to charity.
Trevillion, who was born in Tottenham, north London, in 1934, decided to create an image of Churchill after he read about the former prime minister’s dismay over a portrait commissioned by parliament to mark his 80th birthday in 1954 by the acclaimed artist Graham Sutherland. The painting was later destroyed.
“Churchill’s birthday had been completely ruined by Sutherland’s portrait,” he said. “I decided to do another portrait for his next birthday.”
Trevillion’s work was based on “images in my head that I’d seen of Churchill when I was a child in the blitz. He was always smiling, with his V for victory sign. Those images of him helped me through the night-time bombing.”
The picture was sent to Churchill, by then retired and in ill-health, through contacts of Trevillion’s employers. The former prime minister and the budding artist, then only 21, spoke on the phone. “He said: ‘Churchill here. Is that Trevillion? Be at [a Mayfair address], 10.30 on Wednesday. Oblige.’ Then the phone went dead.”
Trevillion was nervous about meeting his hero. “When I walked into the room, Churchill was seated. He put out his hand. I went to shake it, and he held it. He said he was expecting someone much older. He asked if I’d been evacuated in the war, which I hadn’t. ‘You’re a boy from the blitz,’ he said.”
Churchill signed the picture, telling Trevillion: “There have been a lot of portraits painted of me, but this one I really like. It’s the only one I’ve ever signed.” There are some suggestions that he also signed a 1932 portrait by Paul Maze.
For decades, the portrait has been stored in a bank safe deposit box with occasional periods on display. Trevillion has never hung it in his own home.
His work as an artist began when he stood on the terraces at White Hart Lane, home to Spurs, sketching players on the pitch below. “At school, I never passed an exam. I was only interested in art,” he said.
A breakthrough came when the People published a comic strip, Hey Ref!, which was later renamed You Are the Ref. The strip appeared in the Observer and on the Guardian website from 2006 to 2016. He was also part of a team of artists behind Roy of the Rovers.
He met and drew countless sporting greats. Muhammed Ali “never remembered my name, he just called me ‘artist’”, he wrote in the Observer when the boxer died in 2016. The news moved Trevillion to finish a portrait of Ali that he had begun 52 years earlier.
Trevillion is planning to approach Christie’s auction house for help in selling his portrait of Churchill. Among the organisations he hopes to support are the Peace Field Projects, a children’s football charity, and the Churchill Foundation.
