‘Surprise’ as Monty’s family sell Churchill oil for £1.55m

Between them they forged the alliance which saw Britain through her darkest hours. But the bond between winston Churchill and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery now appears to count for little.

For, in a move which has startled acquaintances, Monty’s family has disposed of an oil painting by Churchill which he gave to his greatest wartime commander as a symbol of his ‘deep respect and friendship’.

entitled Scene At Marrakech, it sold at Christie’s for £1.55million — which would have been a record for a painting by Churchill, had it not been for the sale, on the same night, of a Churchill painting owned by actress Angelina Jolie, which fetched an extraordinary £8.3 million.

Jolie’s canvas — another of Churchill’s Moroccan oil paintings — was given by the PM to U.S. President Franklin D Roosevelt, but had been sold by Roosevelt’s son, elliot, as early as 1950.

In 2011, it was bought by the Hollywood star Brad Pitt, who later married and divorced Jolie.

By contrast, Scene At Marrakech took pride of place at the London home of the Field Marshal’s son, David, and his second wife, tessa.

‘It was in the study,’ remembers a friend from overseas. But David, who succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount Montgomery of el Alamein in 1976, died a year ago aged 91.

thereafter, the painting’s days appear to have been numbered.

‘I don’t think that David’s two children by his first wife, Henry and Arabella, particularly liked the painting; I don’t think they thought it was particularly good.’

Its removal from the study was evidently none of Lady Montgomery’s doing.

‘I wasn’t aware of the sale,’ she tells me. ‘It wasn’t my picture.’

Alerted to the price it fetched at auction, tessa Montgomery expresses her ‘surprise’.

Its departure from the family does, of course, deliver a significant financial boost.

David Montgomery left £6million in his will — and his son Henry’s late wife Caroline was the sister of controversial hedge fund tycoon Crispin Odey.

‘I’ve heard that Crispin was generous to them,’ says the friend. ‘But this gives them something extra with which to help their children.’