Photo: wikimediacommons
In the UK, a famous incident involved a portrait by Graham Sutherland of Winston Churchill. The portrait was commissioned by the Houses of Parliament to give to Churchill on his 80th birthday. He did not like it much and Lady Churchill (above) apparently hated it so much she destroyed it, which Sutherland reportedly viewed as ‘an act of vandalism’.
There was much debate about the quality of the work and whether Lady Churchill – if indeed it was her – should have been allowed to do as she wished with it with complete impunity.