A Story of Churchill, Roosevelt – and Angelina Jolie

The power of provenance and politics should pay off at Christie’s, which is offering a painting by Winston Churchill from the collection of actress Angelina Jolie for between £ 1.5 million and £ 2.5 million. Adding to his celebrity status, “Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” (1943) was the only work the then Prime Minister painted during World War II, and was donated by him to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The couple had traveled to Marrakech together after the Casablanca 10-day conference in 1943.

The artwork – which shows the distinctive 12th century mosque against the backdrop of the Atlas Mountains – was passed on to Roosevelt’s son, Elliott until 1950. It remained in American collections until it or at MS Rau, an art and antiques gallery in New Orleans, from where the Jolie Family Collection purchased the work in 2011.

Churchill began painting in 1915, when he was 40, and began traveling to Marrakech in the late 1930s. In his writings, the wartime Prime Minister acknowledges the influence of Henri Matisse, who had also stayed in Morocco at the beginning of the 20th century.

Christie’s will be donating Jolie’s Churchill on March 1, as well as one of his first paintings of Marrakech that he gave to ‘Monty’, Marshal Montgomery (is £ 300,000 to £ 500,000).

We can’t get enough of Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who stole the show at President Joe Biden’s inauguration last month. Now Harvard University, Gorman’s foster mother, accepted the gift of a mid-recital portrait of the poet by Raphael Adjetey Adjei Mayne, a graduate of the influential Ghanatta College of Art and Design, Accra. The donor was Amar Singh, a London collector, gallery owner, and women’s and LGBT + rights activist, who is also a descendant of the Kapurthala royal family of India. Singh says he recently pledged to spend $ 5 million on art by female and minority artists by 2025.

Singh spotted Mayne’s work on Instagram, posted by New York gallery owner and art advisor Destinee Ross-Sutton, and says he texted her within minutes. “I said this shouldn’t be in a private collection,” Singh explains, and therefore funded the donation of the painting, which was priced at around $ 10,000.

Mayne finished the job in just four days after attending the grand opening. He immediately began another portrait, this time of Kamala Harris sworn in as vice president in the same ceremony. Ross-Sutton hopes it can also go to a relevant institution. Both works are part of Mayne’s ongoing “Faceless” series, about which the artist says, “I leave it up to the viewer to imagine who this person is or could be. . . Detailing the face reduces my message that I send, that there is my darkness.

The withdrawal of “Abraham and the angels” by Rembrandt (1646), valued at between $ 20 and $ 30 million, provided a nervous backdrop to the Sotheby’s Old Masters auction on January 28. But his star lot – “Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Cockade” by Botticelli (c. 1480) – still had its impressive estimate of $ 80 million ($ 92.2 million with fees). This sold out after just two bids and provided the bulk of the auction’s $ 98.3 million total ($ 114.5 million with fees). Botticelli’s unidentified buyer made an offer over the phone through Lilija Sitnika, the auction house’s Russia liaison director, and Sotheby’s said the sub-bidder was a client from Asia, buying for the first time in this category.

Overall, the bidding was slim, relying on a few active buyers. Two other works were withdrawn from the auction and 13 lots remained unsold out of a total of 46. A few works sold above the estimate including, pleasantly, a painting by a rare wife of the old master, the painter. Dutch woman of the golden age Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750). His still life from 1698 cost an online bidder $ 1.8 million ($ 2.2 million with fees, is $ 1.5 million to $ 1.5 million).

Frieze – the magazine that launched the Art Fair franchise – turns 30 this year and has launched a membership program as part of its anniversary celebrations. It starts with an upgraded magazine subscription at £ 40 a year, with access to Frieze’s online archives, entry to its digital conferences and priority booking for its fairs. Once in-person events return, Frieze is planning a premier level of membership for new collectors, for £ 900 per year. Called Frieze 91, it is more akin to the group of young patrons of a museum, with access to galleries, artists’ studios, foundations and institutions.

Some of the funds will go to educational programs at Frieze, although the business movement is also showing how art fairs and media groups are starting to reinvent their sources of income even after the worst of the pandemic. “We all live in a situation right now that is forcing us to find new ways to connect and asking us questions about how communities can and should be defined,” says Matthew Holt, Commercial Director of Frieze.

Frieze will also host a three-day digital program to celebrate 30 years of contemporary art. Participants will include artists Jeremy Deller, Lubaina Himid and Kara Walker as well as an acoustic ensemble from Arlo Parks (February 17-19).

I would like to pay tribute to New York dealer Richard Feigen, died peacefully, at the age of 90, of Covid-19 pneumonia on January 29. Feigen began trading in German Expressionism and Surrealist art in Chicago, but was to become a leading expert and influence in the field of the Old Masters. He was also a keen observer of the market around him and generous with his time. I enjoyed comparing the notes with Feigen, who was often appalled at the gap between the high prices paid for contemporary artists compared to their Old Master counterparts.

Our last in-depth conversation was in 2019, before the sale of a small portion of his collection at Christie’s, when he expressed concern about declining interest in his specialty area. There was, however, an appetite for his works: a panel painting that Feigen had purchased and then attributed to 16th-century Italian artist Annibale Carracci sold for $ 6.1 million ($ 3-5 million), just a testimony of his expertise.

To follow @FTLifeArts on Twitter to discover our latest stories first

Listen to our podcast, Call for culture, where FT editors and special guests discuss life and art during the coronavirus era. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen