Winston Churchill Painting Owned By Angelina Jolie Sells For US$11.5 Million
Image via Nataliia Zhekova / Shutterstock.com
A Winston Churchill artwork owned by Angelina Jolie has been sold at an auction for over US$11.5 million.
The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque painting of the Moroccan landscape was sold at Christie’s in London for nearly £8.3 million (US$11.5 million), after fees, by the Jolie Family Collection. The new price tag smashed the previous record for a work by the British World War II leader.
The artwork features a mosque in Marrakech at sunset, with mountains in the background.
According to Nick Orchard, the head of modern British art at Christie’s, Churchill fell in love “with the quality of light” when he first visited Morocco in 1935. “He felt that his paintings of the country were among his best,” Orchard added.
The work’s pre-sale estimate was £2.5 million (US$3.5 million), and the previous record price for a Churchill painting was £1.7 million (US$2.7 million).
CNN reported that Brad Pitt bought the artwork as a gift to Jolie in 2011.
Tower of Koutoubia Mosque is the only painting that Churchill completed during the 1939 to 1945 conflict. It was finished after the January 1943 Casablanca Conference, where Churchill planned the defeat of Nazi Germany with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Churchill and Roosevelt visited Marrakech after the conference so Churchill could show off the city’s beauty. Churchill then presented the painting to Roosevelt as a memento.
The painting was sold by Roosevelt’s son in the 1960s, and it had several owners before Pitt finally bought it in 2011.
#AuctionUpdate A new #WorldAuctionRecord for Sir Winston Churchill with 'Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque' (1943) selling for £8,285,000. This is the only painting created by Churchill during the Second World War: https://t.co/JCBvGaFShW pic.twitter.com/iZMumvmwp2
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) March 1, 2021
[via CNN, cover image via Nataliia Zhekova / Shutterstock.com]
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