Angelina Jolie has sold a painting by Winston Churchill for £7 million.

Pre-sale estimates ranged from 1.5 million to 2.5 million pounds, with the previous record price for a Churchill painting coming in at slightly under 1.8 million pounds. The sunset photo of a 12th-century mosque in Marrakech with the Atlas Mountains in the background is a piece of political and Hollywood history.

“Churchill first visited Morocco in 1935 where he fell in love with the quality of light there,” according to Nick Orchard, director of modern British art at Christie’s in London, where the auction was held. “He felt that his paintings of the country were among his best.”

It was Churchill’s sole painting finished during the 1939-45 battle, and it was completed after the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, where Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt plotted the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Following the summit, the two leaders traveled to Marrakech so that Churchill could show Roosevelt the city’s splendor. As a souvenir of the trip, Churchill presented Roosevelt with the artwork.

According to a Christie’s spokesman, it is “Churchill’s most important work.”

“Aside from its distinguished provenance, it is the only landscape he made during the war,” the spokesperson added.

On the same day, two more of Churchill’s paintings were auctioned, with the three works collecting a total of £9.43 million.

According to a person familiar with the transaction, actor Brad Pitt purchased Churchill’s sunset painting in 2011 as a present for Jolie.

Pitt bought the artwork from antiquities dealer Bill Rau, who previously told CNN that the painting was sold to a filmmaker in the 1960s by President Roosevelt’s son. The artwork wound up in New Orleans, where it was preserved in a local family’s closet for more than five decades before a family member contacted Rau’s gallery, M.S. Rau.

“The painting depicts the very moment the two world leaders shared as they viewed the majestic landscape of Marrakech as the sun set over the Atlas Mountains, and to know Churchill gifted the painting to FDR after their time together excited me even more,” Rau said.

After two years of marriage, the couple divorced in 2016.

They were divorced in 2019 after their attorneys requested a bifurcated judgment, which means that two married individuals can be proclaimed single while other problems, such as financial and child custody, are still being worked out.

Churchill was a professional army officer before joining politics, and he began painting at the age of 40.

In the 1930s, when much of Morocco was a French protectorate, he developed a fascination for the translucent light of Marrakesh.

The Jolie Family Collection sold the painting. The buyer was not named right away.

Churchill stayed an additional day after the US delegation had departed the meeting to finish his painting. He then gave it to Roosevelt as a birthday present.

In this photo dated February 17, 2021, Christie’s employees adjust an oil on canvas painting by Sir Winston Churchill painted in January 1943 called “Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” during an Art pre-sale photo call at Christie’s auction house in London.
FRANK AUGSTEIN / AP

Nick Orchard, Christie’s head of modern British and Irish art, stated, “This is Churchill’s diplomacy at its most personal and intense.”

“It is not an ordinary gift between leaders. This is soft power, and it is what the special relationship is all about.”

Orchard stated, “The appetite for Winston Churchill’s artwork was demonstrated to great effect at Christie’s.”