Winston Churchill Painting Given to FDR Goes Up At Auction

From the Feb. 2, 2021, CNN Style "Angelina Jolie is selling Winston Churchill's only painting  created during World War II" by Rob Picheta.

The work is expected to sell for $3.4 million at auction.

Churchill painted "Tower of Koutoubia Mosque"  in Marrakech, Morocco, after attending the  Casablanca Conference in January 1943, during which he and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt formulated the next stage of their plans to defeat Hitler.

Churchill gave it to FDR as a gift and it ultimately found its way  into Jolie's art collection in 2011.

The painting was made only after the two leaders agreed to accept only an "unconditional surrender" of Germany.  Churchill had made several paintings of Morocco before the war, but this is the only one during it.

It will be sold by Christie's in London on March 1.

--Gregen

FDR's "Sacred Cow"-- Part 2: "The Flying White House"

From the National Museum of the Air Force site.

FDR's "Sacred Cow" is located here.  Back in 2013, friend Denny and I boarded it on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination (we had also boarded the Air Force 1 plane that had taken him ti Dallas and his body back.  That was a real bit of history.

The Douglas VC-54 Skymaster, was the first purpose-built aircraft to fly  the President of the United States.  It carried the staff  transport designation "VC" designation., the aircraft was officially named "The Flying White House".  However, it became better known by its unofficial nickname "Sacred Cow," a reference  to the high security surrounding the aircraft and its special status.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane while in office.  But, it was not the "Sacred Cow."  It was a Navy -owned, but civilian-operated Boeing  314 Clipper flying boat, the Dixie Clipper, which transported the president to the Casablanca Conference.

--GreGen