A painting by Winston Churchill has been sold by Angelina Jolie for £8.25 million at auction.
The landscape by the wartime Prime Minister is thought to be the only painting that he did as he led the country though the Second World War. The oil on canvas, titled Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, captures sunset over Marrakech and was gifted to his friend and ally President Franklin D Roosevelt after the 1943 Casablanca Conference.
The painting was expected to sell for £2.5 million, a record for one of Churchill's works, but was sold on Tuesday for £8,285,000 at Christie’s auction house.
The work has been called his “best painting” showing the closeness between the two leaders by capturing the Morrocan sunset which he and Roosevelt witnessed after agreeing to push for the Axis forces’ unconditional surrender.
The painting was sold by Roosevelt’s son in 1950 and over 60 years later it was bought by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt from a New Orleans antique dealer. The sale of the painting comes five years after their divorce in 2016 where they split the art collection they shared.
