Winston Churchill Landscape " Mimizan, Landes " Goes For £150,000

[Patdwfsyte]

A record price was paid at an auction today for a painting by the former Prime
Minister Winston Churchill. His landscape work "Mimizan, Landes" fetched
£150,000 at Christie's in London - more than double its estimated value. The
painting depicts one of a series of views from the house of the Duke of
Westminster at Mimizan, his home at Landes near Bordeaux, which Churchill
frequently visited during the 1920s.
Churchill began painting in 1915 and despite receiving no formal training he
exhibited some of his work at the Royal Academy in 1947. A retrospective
display of his paintings was staged in the Royal Academy Diploma Gallery in
1959 and experts were today full of praise for "Mimizan, Landes". Jonathan
Horwich, director of Modern British Pictures, said: "This is a superb painting
by Churchill. "Mimizan was clearly a place where he was at ease and able to
relax doing the thing he loved most - painting." Minutes after that sale, a
"Portrait of Winston Churchill" by Frank Owen Salisbury was sold for £111,500.
His painting was completed in 1943 and shows the Britain's Second World War
leader in his tailor-made "siren" suit, which was intended for use during air
raids. The auction, which made a total of £3,060,160, also included eight
pictures by LS Lowry, which went for a total of £875,500 - with his "Industrial
Landscape" painting fetching £364,500.