Onassis family puts painting by Winston Churchill up for auction

A painting by Winston Churchill that the late British prime minister gave to the late Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis is being put up for sale at auction for an estimated $1.5m to $2m.

After sitting in storage for decades, a painting by Winston Churchill is coming to auction at Phillips New York with an estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million. The landscape, The Moat, Breccles, was painted by Churchill in 1921 and remained in his own collection for 40 years. “He didn’t like to give paintings away, or sell them,” says Jean-Paul Engelen, the deputy chairman and worldwide co-head of 20th century and contemporary art at Phillips. But after developing a friendship with the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in the late 1950s, Churchill decided to bestow upon Onassis an honor previously accorded to a select group that included Queen Elizabeth and Dwight D. Eisenhower: a gift of one of Churchill’s artworks.