A Moroccan landscape painted by Winston Churchill and owned by Angelina Jolie sold at auction for more than $11.5 million, smashing the previous record for a work by Britain’s World War II leader.
Churchill drew a landscape painting titled “The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” during a World War II visit. “Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” sold at Christie’s in London for 8,285,000 pounds ($11,590,715). The pre-sale estimate was 1.5 million pounds to 2.5 million pounds, and the previous record price for a Churchill painting was just under 1.8 million pounds.
The painting is regarded as “Churchill’s most important work” in the Christie’s catalogue. The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque is the only landscape painting that Churchill drew during the war.
Churchill started to paint relatively late, at the age of 40. His passion for the translucent light of Marrakesh, far from the political storms and drab skies of London, dates back to the 1930s when most of Morocco was a French protectorate, and he went on to make six visits to the North African country over the course of 23 years.
It was from the villa, after a historic January 1943 conference in Casablanca with US president Franklin Roosevelt and France’s Charles de Gaulle, that he painted what came to be regarded as his finest work, of the minaret behind the ramparts of the Old City, with mountains behind and tiny colourful figures in front.
After the US delegation had left, Churchill stayed on an extra day and painted the view of the Koutoubia Mosque framed by the mountains. He sent it to Roosevelt for his birthday. Sold by the Roosevelt family in the 1950s, it changed hands several times before passing on to Hollywood’s Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in 2011.