The painting, The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell, is appearing on the market for the first time. It was given by Churchill to his bodyguard Sergeant Edmund Murray and had remained in that family until now.
It will be offered at Sotheby’s Modern & Post-War British Art Evening Sale in London on November 21.
Churchill did not sell any of his paintings during his lifetime and many were given to friends, colleagues and family.
Murray served with Churchill from 1950 until the death of the former prime minister in 1965. Murray remembered that the final occasion Churchill used brushes was at his Kent home, Chartwell, around 1962.
Highly sought after
Sotheby’s said Churchill’s works at Chartwell are highly sought after, with the world auction record of £1.8m achieved for an artwork from 1932 focusing on the same subject, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2014 having been in the collection of his daughter, Mary.
The sale also includes a further work by Churchill, an early landscape painting inspired by the south of France from 1922, to be offered with an estimate of £100,000-150,000. The painting was given to Miss Maud Elgie who, from 1919-1921, had charge over the household’s nursery and Churchill and his wife Clementine’s two eldest children.
