Displaying items by tag: winston churchill

A watch given to Sir Winston Churchill to celebrate victory in the Second World War, proclaiming him a “happy warrior” and likening him to St George, is to be sold at auction for up to £100,000.

The watch, commissioned by a group of “prominent Swiss citizens”, was one of four given to leaders including Charles de Gaulle, Joseph Stalin and Harry S. Truman, to commemorate VE Day.

The descendants of the goldfish glinting in the shady water, in a painting going on view at Sotheby’s auctioneers, are still swimming in the same pond today. The pond was dug by Winston Churchill at his beloved home, Chartwell in Kent, and the original fish were a present from Harrods.

His painting of the scene is one of the star items in an auction of personal possessions left by his last surviving child, Lady Mary Soames, who died last June aged 91.

together with furniture, jewelery, photographs, books – many signed by the authors – and silverware including the dishes which his budgie Toby was trained to march up and down the dinner table and serve salt from, is on public display at Sotheby’s in Bond Street from now until the auction next Wednesday, December 17.

Thirty-eight paintings by Sir Winston Churchill are being offered to the nation, following the death of the politician's youngest daughter in May. Most of the pictures are currently on loan to the family home, Chartwell.

In her will, Lady Mary Soames expressed the wish that the paintings remain there. They have been on display since the home in Kent opened to the public in 1966, a year after the wartime prime minister died. The art historian David Coombs described the paintings as "a national treasure of major historical and artistic importance".

A multimillion-dollar art collection built by poet T.S. Eliot’s widow, Valerie, will be sold at Christie’s London on November 20, 2013. The collection includes works by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (1922-2011), and J.M.W. Turner (1775-19851). Ms. Eliot, who passed away in November at the age of 86, amassed her collection using royalties from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music Cats, which was based on her husband’s whimsical poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Ms. Eliot’s collection, which resided in the London home she shared with her husband, is expected to garner around $7.6 million.

Highlights from the collection include drawings and watercolors by 18^th and 19^th century British artists including Turner, Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), and John Constable (1776-1837); a sculpture by Henry Moore (1898-1986); and a lush landscape titled The Cathedral, Hackwood Park by Winston Churchill (1874-1965). There will also be portrait miniatures from the 16^th through the 19^th centuries, furniture, and jewelry for sale.

Proceeds from the Christie’s auction will benefit the Old Possum’s Practical Trust, an arts charity created by Ms. Eliot.

A portrait of Winston Churchill by Sir William Orpen, a renowned British portrait painter and war artist, will go on public display after years of hanging in the home of Churchill’s late grandson.

Dating back to 1916, the portrait was painted before Churchill became prime minister, but after he resigned from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty due to the failure of WWI’s Gallipoli campaign, the joint British and French operation that was mounted to capture the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and secure a sea route to Russia. Churchill had said that the portrait revealed his soul during one of his darkest hours.

The painting will go on display today at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of a 10-year loan. The National Portrait Gallery said that Churchill regarded the emotionally revealing painting as the finest one of himself. The portrait was briefly on view at a 2005 exhibition at the Imperial War Museum but has otherwise remained out of public sight. Sandy Nairne, the National Portrait Gallery’s director said, “I am very pleased that the Churchill family has agreed that this outstanding portrait by William Orpen of Winston Churchill, the nation’s greatest 20^th century statesman, should now be on public display.”