(London) The most famous paintings by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) were sold at auction Monday in London for 7 million pounds (12.3 million Canadian dollars) by Christie’s.
The Koutoubia Mosque Tower (1943) of Marrakesh, a picture made on the occasion of an official visit to the Moroccan city during World War II, ruins estimates.
The canvas oil painting offered for sale by American actress Angelina Jolie is considered “the most important painting of Sir Winston Churchill” because of its “entanglement in the history of the twentieth century.”H Century, ”British art historian Barry Phipps noted in the catalog.
This simple, undecorated landscape represents the minaret, a symbol of the strength of the Almohad dynasty (12H Century), intertwined with the old city walls and leaning on snow-capped mountains.
Churchill gave it to Roosevelt at that time. The painting was sold by one of Roosevelt’s sons in the 1950s, and the painting was changed several times, before landing in 2011 in the collection of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
The Conservative Party leader started painting late when he was 40. Everyone who loved escaping political storms and the grayness of London discovered the ocher light of Marrakesh in the 1930s, during the time of the French protectorate, and made a total of six trips there in 23 years.
A press photo of the period between Roosevelt and Churchill shows them enjoying the sunset over a panorama from Taylor’s Villa that will inspire the painting.
In the same auction, two more Churchill paintings were sold at auction: a landscape of Marrakech sold for 1.55 million pounds (2.73 million Canadian dollars) when estimated between 300,000 and 500,000 pounds, and a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London estimated. Between 200 thousand and 300 thousand pounds sold for 880 thousand pounds (1.55 million Canadian dollars).