A Winston Churchill painting sold at a regional Canadian auction house on Wednesday, achieveing one of the strongest results for the former British prime minister outside a major London or New York sale,. The sale underscores the continued demand for Churchill’s late-career landscapes.
Churchill’s Marrakech (circa 1935), offered at Heffel Fine Art Auction House in Toronto as part of a 27-lot sale of works deaccessioned from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s corporate collection, sold for $1.3 million—more than double its high estimate of $600,000. It was the top lot in a sale that realized $4.9 million in total hammer price.
Churchill gifted the painting to his wife, Lady Clementine Ogilvy Spencer-Churchil, who in turn donated it to Hudson’s Bay in 1956. The work shows the warm light and vivid palette of Marrakech, a city Churchill visited frequently beginning in the 1930s and later considered one of his greatest painting subjects.
Though Wednesday’s result is far below the artist’s auction record, it is notable for a regional sale. Churchill’s highest price was set in 2021 when The Tower of Koutoubia Mosque—his only wartime painting, created after the Casablanca Conference and gifted to Franklin D. Roosevelt—sold for £8.3 million ($11.5 million) at Christie’s London from actress Angelina Jolie’s Jolie Family Collection.
The Heffel auction, which included 19th- and early 20th-century historical paintings commissioned by Hudson’s Bay, drew strong bidding across the category. A number of works, including pieces by Walter J. Phillips and Adam Sherriff Scott, far surpassed their presale estimates.
Churchill began painting at age 40 and produced more than 500 works over the course of his life. Market interest in his landscapes—particularly his Moroccan views—has grown steadily over the past decade, buoyed by celebrity provenance, museum exhibitions, and the crossover appeal of a statesman-artist whose canvases blend political history with personal retreat.
