Framed KARSH PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPH of Winston Churchill

Description

Yousuf Karsh’s iconic portrait of a scowling Winston Churchill (“The Roaring Lion”) was taken 30 December 1941 in an ante-room of the Ottawa House of Commons following Churchill’s address to the Canadian Parliament. As official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert wrote in his own memoir, IN SEARCH OF CHURCHILL, Churchill was, at that moment,”in [a] happy mood… He had just made a successful speech [‘Some chicken… some neck’]. He had left the parliamentary chamber smiling… Karsh had hoped for something stern and warlike. To secure the picture he wanted, he went up to Churchill and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. ‘By the time I got back to my camera,’ Karsh later recalled, ‘[Churchill] looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the picture.’”

This vintage gelatin silver print is signed by the photographer in white stylus pen in the lower right corner of the image (which measures 10 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches on 14 x 18 inch paper). The photograph is matted and majestically framed in black, gilded with gold leaf (18 x 20 inches overall).

And in case you were wondering, the image notoriously stolen from the Château Laurier Hotel in Ontario recently is larger, a 16 x 20-inch print.