FRAMED WORLD WAR II NORMANDY SNAPSHOT PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED BY WINSTON CHURCHILL AND GENERAL MONTGOMERY

Description

This wartime snapshot photograph of Winston Churchill and General Bernard Law Montgomery is signed by both in ink on the image. The photograph was taken during Churchill’s second visit to the Normandy beaches on July 22, 1944, when he was driven by Montgomery across the River Orne for a surprise visit to the French city of Caen, which had only just been captured by the Allies. Churchill had elevated Montgomery to the rank of Field Marshall in April 1944. As Field Marshall, Montgomery grew accustomed to signing his name with the appended abbreviation, “F.M.,” yet here, he hurriedly signed as had been his habit: “B.L. Montgomery, General.”

Churchill and Montgomery are standing in Montgomery’s Humber (together with Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey, the Commander of the British 2nd Army). The car was provided to Montgomery by the Humber/Hillman distributors in Cairo during Montgomery’s time there as commander of the Eighth Army, from August 1942 through 1943. Montgomery loved the car and brought it with him to Sicily, then on to France and Germany in 1944, before ultimately taking it home to England after the war, much to the annoyance of the War Office. The car remained with him until his death.

The photograph has been mounted in a rich burgundy mat with an original press photograph (3 1/2 x 5 inches) of Winston Churchill in conversation with Major General George S. Patton, whose back is to the camera, at the Casablanca Conference in Morocco, January 1943. To their left stands Churchill’s Chiefs of Staff liaison Major-General Hastings Ismay. The pair of photographs are laborately framed together in gilt (16 x 19 inches overall).