Churchill painting owned by Angelina Jolie sells for $11.5M

LONDON (AP) — A Moroccan landscape painted by Winston Churchill and owned by Angelina Jolie has sold for more than $11.5 million, smashing the previous record for a work by Britain’s World War II leader. “Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” sold at Christie’s auction house Monday for 8,285,000 pounds ($11,590,715). The previous record price for a Churchill painting was just under 1.8 million pounds. The image of the 12th-century mosque in Marrakech is a piece of both political and Hollywood history. It was completed after the January 1943 Casablanca Conference, where Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt planned the defeat of Nazi Germany and Churchill gave it to Roosevelt as a memento. The painting was sold by the Jolie Family Collection.