Churchill trove goes on auction
New York – A treasure trove of Winston Churchill’s possessions including his desk, a holiday painting from a trip to Morocco and a copy of his first book go on sale in New York on Thursday.
An imposing portrait of the British wartime leader by Hungarian artist Arthur Pan, sold at the height of the World War II in 1943 to fundraise for Clementine Churchill’s Aid to Russia Fund, is listed for $125 000 (about R2.3 million).
The pieces on sale at the Winter Show art, antiques and design fair until next Sunday, were acquired from the heir to the Forbes media fortune, Steve Forbes.
“We’ve bought the highlights, we have papers, letters and also have the desk and the painting – crown jewel stuff,” rare books dealer Pom Harrington said.
Harrington said the cigar-smoking former prime minister had an enduring appeal in the United States. “He’s a war hero – he was the underdog. We’ll have plenty of customers in America.”
Churchill was born to a mother from the United States and a British father and went on to receive honorary US citizenship.
His 1935 oil study of The Entrance to the Gorge at Todhra near Marrakesh in Morocco has an asking price of $395 000.
“If it weren’t for painting, I could not live,” Churchill famously once said.
The desk, available for $450 000, was from his London home at Hyde Park Gate and was used while writing his Second World War memoirs, hand-corrected revised proofs of which are on sale for $750 000.
An inscribed copy of a first edition of The Story of the Malakand Field Force, Churchill’s first published nonfiction work, is on sale for $47 500. –