One of the great statesmen of the 20th century, a star of the jet set, and the first "super-yacht" in history: the auction house Phillips to auction on June 23 in New York a signed landscape Winston Churchill, cocktail of these three ingredients.
This oil painting, titled
The Moat, Breccles
, painted by Churchill in 1921, is estimated by Phillips between $ 1.5 and $ 2 million, far from the $ 11.6 million achieved by another painting of the "old lion. », Sold by Angelina Jolie at Christie's last March.
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But even if no record should be broken, this landscape - which Churchill mentioned in a December 1921 essay on “Painting as a Pastime” - could attract history fans and celebrities alike, amid the recent craze for paintings. paintings of the great hero of WWII. Churchill kept it for forty years before offering it in 1961, four years before his death, to his friend and jet-set king, Aristotle Onassis, Jean-Paul Engelen, vice-president of Phillips, told AFP. . The wealthy shipowner was so proud of this gift that he hung it in the place of honor, behind the famous bar - named Ari's bar - of his yacht, alongside works by Vermeer, Gauguin, Le Greco and Pissarro.
This super-yacht, the "Christina" - the first name of Onassis's daughter - was a former Canadian Navy frigate, nearly a hundred meters long. She had participated in the Normandy landings, before Onassis bought her post-war for $ 34,000. Onassis had it lavishly renovated, for some $ 4 million, to make it
"one of the most incredible floating structures,"
and one of the jetset's favorite spots at the time, says Engelen. From Elizabeth Taylor to John F. Kennedy, via Maria Callas or Richard Burton, Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, all the big names of the time were on board.
When Onassis died in 1975 - seven years after his marriage to Jackie Kennedy - his yacht was sold, and everything on board put into storage, until his heirs recently decided to part with the board.
Read also: Aristotle Onassis, the wealthy Greek shipowner disappears on March 15, 1975
To better seduce fans of this mix of history and stars, the auction house Phillips has reconstituted, in its New York exhibition rooms, the Ari's Bar - including imitations of its famous whale teeth - and filled the shelves of Pol Roger champagne bottles, the favorite bubbles of the "old lion".
