A recently discovered painting by Sir Winston Churchill, given to U.S. Gen. George Marshall in 1953, is going on the block.
Sotheby's announced Friday the View of Tenherir is expected to fetch at least £250,000 ($562,000 Cdn). Two paintings by the former British prime minister recently sold for more than £300,000 each ($675,000 Cdn).
Sir Winston Churchill is shown in 1953, the same year he gave an oil painting to U.S. Gen. George Marshall.
(Associated Press)
"There's a special interest in Churchill. The painting is significant because it has missed the radar," Sarah Thomas, a British art expert, told the Independent newspaper.
Created in 1951, the oil was presented to Marshall as a symbol of Anglo-American solidarity. It was held in the family for years, hidden from the world.
"It's quite a rare event for something like this to just pop up out of the blue," said Thomas, of Sotheby's.
When Kitty Winn, Marshall's granddaughter, decided to sell it, the painting's provenance came to light.
"When I first saw the painting when I was a child, I don't think I knew the significance of it, but I knew it was given a place of honour in my grandparents' drawing room," she told the newspaper.
Winn said she had grown to respect the work after finding out its history.
View of Tenherir, a town in the desert near the Atlas mountains, was completed in 1951 in Marrakech, Morocco, where Churchill often visited to write his memoirs and to paint.
Thomas said Churchill saw painting as a hobby and would do it while contemplating speeches or decisions.
"A lot of his paintings are pretty poor and amateur," said Thomas. "But over the years, he learnt quite a lot."
'The last great American'
Churchill first met Marshall, the U.S. army chief of staff during the Second World War, in 1943 and had called him "the last great American." Churchill promised to pay tribute to him one day.
In 1953, Churchill presented the painting to Marshall, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his economic relief strategy for post-war Europe — known as the Marshall Plan — and was invited to Queen Elizabeth's coronation in London.
Marshall's wife, Katherine, wrote to Churchill to tell him that it was "a gala day" when they hung the painting.
"It has added so much to the beauty of our drawing room and has the place of honour," she wrote.
View of Tenherir will be auctioned in London on Dec. 11.
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