チャーチルの風景画、１２億円で落札　アンジェリーナ・ジョリーさん出品

【ロンドンＡＦＰ＝時事】第2次世界大戦時に英首相を務めたウィンストン・チャーチルが描いた風景画が1日、ロンドンで競売にかけられ、予想価格を大きく上回る828万5000ポンド（約12億3000万円、手数料込み）で落札された。作品は、米俳優のアンジェリーナ・ジョリーさんが所有していた。競売大手クリスティーズがツイッターで明らかにした。（写真はウィンストン・チャーチル元英首相の絵画「The　Tower　of　the　Koutoubia　Mosque」。英ロンドンにあるクリスティーズのオークションハウスで）
　熱心なアマチュア画家だったチャーチルは、第２次世界大戦中の１９４３年に訪れたモロッコのマラケシュからインスピレーションを得て、「Ｔｈｅ　Ｔｏｗｅｒ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　Ｋｏｕｔｏｕｂｉａ　Ｍｏｓｑｕｅ（クトゥビーヤ・モスク＜イスラム礼拝所＞の塔）」と題された油絵を描いた。完成した作品は、同じく戦時下の指導者だったフランクリン・ルーズベルト米大統領（当時）に贈られた。
　クリスティーズは、この作品を「チャーチルの最も重要な作品」と評し、「著名人が所有していたという来歴はさておき、戦時中にチャーチルが描いた唯一の風景画」と説明している。
　これまで何人かの手に渡り、最終的にジョリーさんの所有となっていたが、ジョリーさんは最近になってこの絵を売りに出していた。
　当初の落札予想価格は１５０万～２５０万ポンド（約２億２０００万～３億７０００万円）だったが、電話での入札が大半を占めた競売はヒートアップし、予想を大幅に上回る値段で落札された。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】

〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/03/03-14:12）

A painting of Marrakesh by Britain's famed wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, owned by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie, smashed expectations to sell for ��7 million ($9.75 million) at auction in London on Monday.
Churchill, a keen artist, took inspiration from the Moroccan city and painted The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque oil work during a World War II visit in 1943.
He gave the finished article to fellow wartime leader, US president Franklin Roosevelt.
Auction house Christie's called it Churchill's most important work.
Aside from its distinguished provenance, it is the only landscape he made during the war, it added.
The work eventually found its way into the hands of actress Angelina Jolie, who recently put it up for sale.
After frenzied bidding, much of it carried out over the phone, the gavel eventually came down at ��7 million, smashing the pre-sale expectations of ��1.5 to ��2.5 million.
Two more of his paintings also went under the hammer, with the three works together fetching ��9.43 million.
A career army officer before entering politics, Churchill started to paint relatively late, at the age of 40.
His passion for the translucent light of Marrakesh, far from the political storms and drab skies of London, dates back to the 1930s when most of Morocco was a French protectorate.
He went on to make six visits to the North African country over the course of 23 years.
Here in these spacious palm groves rising from the desert the traveller can be sure of perennial sunshine... and can contemplate with ceaseless satisfaction the stately and snow-clad panorama of the Atlas Mountains, he wrote in 1936 in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper.
- Birthday gift -
He would set up his easel on the balconies of the grandiose La Mamounia hotel or the city's Villa Taylor, beloved by the European jet set of the 1970s.
It was from the villa, after a historic January 1943 conference in Casablanca with Roosevelt and France's Charles de Gaulle, that he painted what came to be regarded as his finest work, of the minaret behind the ramparts of the Old City, with mountains behind and tiny colourful figures in front.
You cannot come all this way to North Africa without seeing Marrakesh, he is reputed to have told Roosevelt. I must be with you when you see the sun set on the Atlas Mountains.
A newspaper photograph taken at the time shows the two wartime Allied leaders admiring the sunset.
After the US delegation had left, Churchill stayed on an extra day and painted the view of the Koutoubia Mosque framed by the mountains.
He sent it to Roosevelt for his birthday.
This is Churchill's diplomacy at its most personal and intense, said Christie's head of modern British and Irish art, Nick Orchard.
It is not an ordinary gift between leaders. This is soft power, and it is what the special relationship is all about.
A second Churchill landscape, Scene in Marrakesh, painted on his first visit to Morocco in 1935, earlier sold for ��1.5 million.
That was painted while on a stay at Mamounia, where he marvelled at the truly remarkable panorama over the tops of orange trees and olives, in a letter to his wife Clementine.
Churchill's painting of London's St Paul's Cathedral also sold, fetching ��880,000.