A painting by Winston Churchill is being offered for sale by Angelina Jolie. The artwork is the only painting Churchill completed during WWII—he was rather busy at the time—and depicts a desert scene in Marrakesh that struck him as particularly significant following his 1943 visit to Morocco for the Casablanca Conference.
The other Allied leader in attendance was Franklin Roosevelt, who at the conference used the phrase ‘unconditional surrender’, which has been interpreted as an example of as crafty a bit of loaded wartime statesmanship as any in history, as it may well have bonded an absent Stalin with the Western Allies against the possibility of a separate peace. Perhaps partly for his gift for timing—or his gift for surprise—Churchill gave FDR the painting.
The work is called The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque. It is expected to fetch as much as $3.4 million when it goes under the gavel at Christie’s on the first of next month.