Actress Angelina Jolie will sell a painting in March that former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill painted as a gift to former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Christie’s auction house in London announced Monday.
Considered the only work the ‘Prime Minister’ completed during the Second World War, the painting will be offered to the highest bidder at an estimated price of between £ 1.5 million and £ 2.5 million (between £ 1.7 million and £ 2.8 million). million euros / between 2 million and 3.4 million euros). million dollars).
The painting, which depicts a 12th-century mosque under a Moroccan sunset, was a gift from Churchill to Roosevelt after the 1943 Casablanca Conference, where they agreed on a strategy to defeat Nazi Germany.
After the event, the British leader invited his North American counterpart to walk around Marrakesh to show him the views of the city and the evening light, a scene that so impressed Roosevelt that Churchill decided to immortalize it as a memory of the conference.
After the death of the US President, in 1945, the work passed through several owners for decades until it fell into the hands of the couple who previously formed Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
When they broke up, the painting was plunged into limbo in speculation about the spread of the vast art collection that nurtured the marriage.
Now the Jolie Family Collection will be selling the landscape work entitled “Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” (“Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque”) as part of an auction of modern British art at Christie’s on March 1.
“[El cuadro] it is arguably Winston Churchill’s best painting because of the importance of the subject matter to him and the fact that it highlights the magnitude of the friendship between the two leaders, ”Christie’s representative Nick Orchard noted in a statement.
Churchill began re-creating scenes from Morocco in 1935, when his painting teacher, John Lavery, encouraged him to visit the country.
The painting being auctioned by Jolie, one of the fifty Churchill dedicated to Morocco, aims for one of the highest prices for the ‘best’ paintings at the auction, the note said.
It will not be the first Moroccan sight, a gift from Churchill to an American leader, to be auctioned: in 2007 the landscape of ‘Marrakech’ was sold, a gift to President Harry S. Truman, with a starting price between 431,000 and 720,000 euros (between $ 521,294 and $ 871,000).