FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 15, 2014
Media Contact: Kayla Medina
Public Relations Assistant
912.790.8837
[email protected]
Telfair Museums’ Churchill Exhibition to Include Painting
owned by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
Savannah, GA….Telfair Museums announced today that its upcoming exhibition of Sir Winston
Churchill paintings, The Art of Diplomacy: Winston Churchill and the Pursuit of Painting,” will
include one of Churchill’s most important works, a landscape called The Tower of the Katoubia
Mosque (1943). The exhibition is on display April 23-July 26 at the Jepson Center for the Arts.
The landscape is the only piece that Churchill painted during World War II, and according to his
Great-Grandson, Duncan Sandys, and the exhibition’s curator, J. English Cook, it might have
played an important role in the war, as well.
“In January of 1943, Churchill secretly met with President Franklin Roosevelt in Casablanca,
Morocco to decide the timing of D-Day, the invasion of France,” write Cook and Sandys in the
exhibition catalogue. “After days of tough negotiation, Churchill convinced Roosevelt to support
a D-Day campaign of overwhelming force in 1944. He invited Roosevelt to cement the
agreement – which Churchill knew demanded a close personal friendship – over a trip to
Marrakech to watch the sun set against the backdrop of the Atlas Mountains. The next day,
Churchill painted the daytime view from the same spot, later giving the painting to Roosevelt.”
President Roosevelt hung the painting in his Hyde Park, New York home. His son, Elliot
Roosevelt, sold it to a collector, and as the years went by, the painting passed through several
hands and became known as the “lost Roosevelt.” In 2011 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie bought
the painting. Never before has the couple loaned the painting for display, until doing so for this
exhibition.
The Art of Diplomacy: Winston Churchill and the Pursuit of Painting is organized by the
Millennium Gate Museum, Atlanta, GA and is presented by Telfair Museums, in partnership with
the Georgia Historical Society.
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