Angelina sells her Winston Churchill painting for a record sum
On Monday (1 March) a painting by Sir Winston Churchill that was owned by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie sold for just over £8 million ($11m) at an online Christie's auction in London. The most ever paid for a work by the UK's former prime minister, the painting Tower Of The Koutoubia Mosque features the Atlas Mountains in Marrakech and is the only artwork Churchill created during wartime.
He painted it after the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, where he and US president Franklin Roosevelt planned the actions that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. After the conference he persuaded Roosevelt to travel 150 miles to Marrakech and watch the sunset on the mountains there. The next day Churchill painted the scene, which he later sent to Roosevelt as a birthday gift.
It was sold on after Roosevelt's death and in 2011 it was bought by Jolie and her former partner Brad Pitt. Now the painting, which serves as a momento of the UK-US's 'special relationship', has been bought by an unknown buyer. Click or scroll on to see some other record-breaking auctions from the past year. All dollar values in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
Hannah Ward-Glenton
02 March 2021
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