A rare painting by Winston Churchill featuring the British World War II leader’s favourite brand of whisky fetched nearly £1million at auction in London.
The 1930s oil painting, of a bottle of Johnny Walker’s Black label whisky and a bottle of brandy with a jug and glasses, sparked a bidding battle before it sold for £983,000.
The sale, at a Sotheby’s online auction of modern and post-war British art, was around five times above pre-sale estimates and among the highest ever reached under the hammer for a Churchill painting.
A member of staff poses with a rare painting by Britain’s former prime minister Winston Churchill entitled ‘Jug with Bottles’ and featuring his favourite brand of whisky which sold for almost £1 million at Sotheby’s auction house in London yesterday
Winston Churchill (left) donated the painting to W. Averell Harriman (second from the left) who acted as US special envoy to Europe in the 1940s. Pictured: Winston Churchill, Averell Harriman, Stalin and an unknown man in the Kremlin in Moscow
The war-time leader, who was a keen amateur artist, created the still life work – entitled ‘Jug with Bottles’ – in the 1930s at his country house Chartwell, in Kent, southeast England.
For Churchill, his beloved family home Chartwell, like painting, became a retreat from the stresses of political life.
Churchill, who once delivered the famous quote, ‘The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whisky’, was known to be a lover of Johnny Walker Black Label.
The painting reflected Churchill’s fondness for the brand, which he often drank first thing in the morning with soda water, according to Sotheby’s.
He later gave it to the American businessman W. Averell Harriman, who acted as US special envoy to Europe in the 1940s.
Harriman was photographed sitting between Churchill and Stalin in Moscow in 1942, and the gift of the painting suggests he shared convivial drams with Churchill.
The famous politician would give paintings to ‘like-minded people,’ said Simon Hucker, co-head of modern and post-war British art at Sotheby’s, ahead of the auction.
It is unclear whether Churchill knew that Pamela Churchill, the wife of his son Randolph, was having an affair with Harriman during this period.
Pamela Churchill married Harriman decades later in the 1970s and the painting was sold following her death in 1997.
It was back on sale on Tuesday after the deaths of the later owners, US collectors Barbara and Ira Lipman.
Throughout his lifetime, Churchill would go on to create more than 550 paintings, describing it as ‘my rescue in a most trying time’ in his book Painting as a Pastime.
A similar work by Churchill, featuring a collection of bottles and called ‘Bottlescape’, still hangs at Chartwell.
Churchill created the still life Jug with Bottle work while at his beloved family home Chartwell, in Kent, during the 1930s
Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela married Harriman in the 1970s and the painting was sold following her death in 1997
The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell, which depicts the pond at his Kent home, was painted in 1932 and sold for £1.8 million at auction in 2014.
It was auctioned at Sotheby’s with 14 other works, following the death of his daughter Mary Soames and was considered one of his masterpieces by experts.
It had been given an estimated value of £400,000-£600,000.
Another painting, Tapestries at Blenheim, sold for £1m, while his depiction of The Harbour, Cannes, fetched £722,500.