The painting portrays the Tower of Koutoubia mosque at sunset during the 12th century, with green nature and the high Atlas Mountains in the background
Famous American actress Angelina Jolie is selling Winston Churchill’s World War II-era painting of Morocco’s landscape of the tower of Koutoubia mosque for a price of 2.05 to 3.42 million dollars.
Famous art auction house Christie’s will put up the painting for auction on March 1, according to its press release published on Monday.
Titled ‘Tower of Koutoubia Mosque”, the painting was originally a gift from Churchill, the UK’s prime minister at the time to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The painting is considered a piece of political and artistic history.
Churchill painted ‘Tower of Koutoubia Mosque’ after Roosevelt was amazed by Marrakech’s beauty in a meeting following the January 1943 Casablanca conference where the US and UK met to plan military strategy against Nazi Germany.
Together with her former husband, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie purchased the painting in 2011, after it had several owners. The iconic work was first sold by Roosevelt’s son after the president’s death in 1945.
The painting portrays the popular Marrakech mosque at sunset during the 12th century, with green nature and the high Atlas Mountains in the background
The head of the modern British art department at Christie’s auction house, Nick Orchard described the painting as a “historically significant painting.”
“Tower Of The Koutoubia Mosque was created following the Casablanca Conference where it was agreed by the Allied forces that only complete surrender by the Axis powers would be acceptable,” Orchard added
Christie’s stated that Winston Churchill “created around 45 paintings depicting Moroccan landscapes after he was encouraged to visit the country by his art tutor Sir John Lavery.”
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Another one of Churchill’s earliest paintings of Marrakech titled, ‘Scene at Marrakech, circa 1935’, which he gifted to his field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, will also be offered during Christie’s London sale for a price of 360,996 and 601,660 dollars.
