Surprising sale of “Churchill” painting – ISNA

According to Isna, when the chain of Canadian department stores “Hudson’s Bay Company” declared bankruptcy in March, the fate of a collection of valuable works of art belonging to this company fell into a halo of uncertainty. Now the sale of a part of this art treasure, including a rare painting by “Winston Churchill”, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, has begun, and the result was surprising considering the sale of 1.5 million dollars of “Marrakech” painting by “Churchill” for 1.5 million dollars.

This auction, which was held on November 19 with the sale of 27 paintings at the Canadian auction “Heffel”, ended with the sale of all the paintings at a price higher than the estimated prices.

The flagship of this auction was an impressionist painting of a street painter in Morocco, created by Winston Churchill in 1935, and it was sold in this auction for three times the estimated price.

Churchill, who was involved in political problems at the time and was not given a position by the Stanley Baldwin government, traveled to Morocco for a vacation in 1935. He fell in love with this city and called it “Paris of the Great Desert”. The painting “Marrakech” painted in 1935 shows that he was fascinated by the play of light and shadow in the landscapes of this city.

He visited Morocco again in 1943 with Franklin Roosevelt, after the Casablanca conference, and later presented a painting of the city’s main mosque with mountains in the background to the US president. Churchill’s wife, Clementine, donated the Marrakech painting to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1956.

Winston Churchill is best known for serving as the Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II. He was born in November 1874 in an aristocratic family. However, “Churchill” is also considered a painter; A painter who was interested in depicting landscapes.

“Churchill” began his political career around 1900, when he was a member of the British Parliament and eventually became the British Prime Minister.

As an impressionist painter, “Churchill” was very interested in recording landscapes, especially in the first and last hours of the day. Not a professional painter, despite the French Impressionists, he did not look to distant places and nature for inspiration, but used the scenery around his home.

Of course, this does not mean that “Churchill” only painted from scenes that were familiar to him. Due to his job, he traveled a lot and devoted time to art during these trips.

“Churchill” also lived in the “Near East” for some time. During this time, he was busy creating paintings. The paintings he created in Egypt depict golden clouds, blue sky and green and yellow earth. He even depicted the famous pyramids of Egypt in one of these paintings.

At the November 19 Heffel auction, the painting “City Street Light” (1894) by Frederic Marlette La Smith, which depicts a scene of city life in Toronto around 1900, was sold for $691,250, which is 6 times the floor estimate.

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