The gallery had commissioned Nicola Hicks, a leading sculptor renowned for her spikey work with straw and plaster, to capture Tony Blair??s likeness for posterity. It is a tradition for prime ministers to have their portraits painted for the gallery and Hicks was selected to do a bust after lobbying by Blair??s friend and mentor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who admires her sculptures.

But Irvine does not appear to have fully consulted Cherie. According to a source close to the prime minister??s wife, her misgivings about Hicks??s work stem from a visit to Irvine??s Scottish home in the late 1980s.

The Hicks sculpture of a wild animal was positioned at the end of the Blairs?? bed and it frightened Cherie during the night. It is an experience she has never forgotten. ??Cherie was really disturbed by it,?? said the source. ??It scared her and almost gave her nightmares.??

The story ends a mystery that has perplexed the gallery and been raised with the Commons works of art committee.

Hicks, 43 and a graduate of the Royal College of Art, was chosen after the gallery held an informal competition in 1999. She beat artists such as Paula Rego, Alison Watt, John Keene and Tai-Shan Schierenberg.

Irvine??s support is said to have been highly influential. He owns another three of Hicks??s works besides the one that scared Cherie.

Since her first solo exhibition in 1985, which featured a life-sized dying bull made of straw and hessian, Hicks??s work has gained international fame with exhibitions in Paris, India, Scandinavia and Japan.

Despite Hicks??s reputation, Charles Saumarez Smith, then director of the National Portrait Gallery, found that Downing Street kept putting off the date when Blair would sit for her. She shared his frustrations. At one point she even suggested painting Blair on horseback from her imagination.

In early 2001, Downing Street eventually said it wanted to wait until after the general election. ??But that date then went by and still I heard nothing,?? said Hicks. A visit by the artist, who lives on a Cumbrian farm, to meet Blair at Chequers still failed to bring forward the sitting.

Blair has now officially declined the Hicks sculpture, although his wife??s night-time scare has never been given as the reason.

Hicks, who currently has an exhibition of new work running until mid-January at Flowers East gallery in London and calls her animal sculptures ??Hicks??s beasts??, is said to be both disappointed and angry, though the National Portrait Gallery is now discussing another commission.

Curiously, Downing Street said yesterday ??no agreements for works of this kind had been made?? even though the commission has been widely reported.

The apparent snub, however, has attracted criticism from other quarters. ??It??s terrible that the prime minister is saying ??No??,?? said Tony Banks, the Labour MP who is chairman of the Commons works of art committee.

He believes Blair should have gone ahead ??even if Hicks and Derry Irvine??s idea of art was a bit too avant garde for the Blairs??.

Banks, who earlier this year raised again with Blair the idea of an official portrait, says he will soon be going to No 10 again to discuss the matter.

Banks, who also believes Alastair Campbell, Blair??s former director of communications, was wary about the sculpture, will argue that an artist must be chosen to replace Hicks while Blair is in office.

Ideally, he believes two copies of the same painting would be produced, one to hang in the National Portrait Gallery and the other in the Commons, where already there are several works portraying politicians, including a small one of Blair done on the hustings in 2001 by Johnny Yeo, son of the Tory MP Tim Yeo.

This, however, was not a formal sitting. Banks points to the example of John Wonnacott??s picture of John Major, done just after he left office in 1997. One hangs in the portrait gallery, the other in the Commons gallery.

Michael Noakes, one of Britain??s leading portrait artists whose official subjects include the Queen, Sir Alec Guinness, Sir Ralph Richardson and Baroness Thatcher, described Blair??s reluctance to be portrayed by Hicks as a great pity.

??I just wonder if Blair is too worried about public scrutiny and whether he might be seen as too vain to have an official portrayal in a gallery,?? he said.

Thatcher??s 1985 picture by Rodrigo Moynihan hangs in the portrait gallery. Even Winston Churchill sat for seven official portraits in the five years he was prime minister during the second world war. ??And don??t tell me that Churchill wasn??t busy then,?? said Banks.

Every prime minister of the past 50 years has a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, though most were done after they had left office. They include Bryan Organ??s Harold Macmillan, Ruskin Spear??s Harold Wilson and Graham Sutherland??s studies of Churchill from 1954.

However, Sutherland??s actual portrait is not there. When it was unveiled in the Commons in front of Churchill he sarcastically referred to this ??remarkable example of modern art??. His wife Clementine was even less amused. It is said that she later had it burnt.

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