- Employees of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Canada noticed that a famous portrait of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was not hung properly.
- They quickly realized it was a fake, replaced it with the real one, and an investigation was launched.
- Photographer Yousuf Karsh credits the portrait with changing his life.
A famous portrait of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill appears to have ended up at the center of a robbery.
The portrait, exhibited at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, Canada, was documented by Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1941 and installed in 1998, the hotel published on Facebook Monday.
The hotel said the photograph had been replaced with a copy of the original.
He discovered the switch when a maintenance employee who takes care of the hotel’s artwork and photography noticed the photo was not properly aligned on the wall, said Genevieve Dumas, manager general of the hotel. The hotel staff removed the picture from the wall and that’s when they noticed something was wrong. Wrong.
The portrait is supposed to be locked into the wall by four anchors, but it wasn’t.
“It’s a very sophisticated device,” Dumas told USA TODAY. “It wasn’t anchored. … It was actually hanging by a thread like anyone would have at home.”
She also said the replacement photo was smaller than the original because it didn’t line up with the wall anchors and the frame was different from others in the collection.
But perhaps one of the most compelling gifts is signing.
When the hotel contacted the manager of the Karsh estate, he immediately knew that this was not the original portrait. The hotel also sent him a photo of Karsh’s signature, which estate representatives said was forged, Dumas confirmed.
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The hotel asked those with information to share it with Ottawa police.
Dumas said there was a lot of security at the hotel, including cameras, so management sent evidence to the police.
She spends a lot of time showing the portrait to guests, and it’s common for people to take pictures with it. For this reason, the hotel asked people who had photos of it to send them. Investigators can compare the portrait in customer photos, tell right from wrong, and possibly determine when the change was made.
Hotel management believe the portrait was taken between Christmas Day and Jan. 6, 2022, Dumas said on Wednesday.
“I knew after taking it that it was an important photo”
In the famous photo, the former prime minister looks stoically into the camera, his left hand on his hip while his right hand rests on a chair.
Karsh, the 20th century photographer who took the photo, said that day changed his life and his website offers an intimate look at the moments leading up to his portraiture.
“I knew after taking it that it was an important photo, but I could hardly imagine that it would become one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography,” he said. in an excerpt on its website.
According to the photographer, Churchill had visited Washington and then Ottawa; Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King invited Karsh to join, so he waited in the president’s bedroom, where his lights and camera had been set up the night before.
King entered the room, his arms intertwined with Churchill’s, and when Karsh turned on his spotlights, Churchill asked, “What is that?”
Karsh shyly asked if he could have his portrait taken to celebrate the “historic occasion”, at which Churchill asked why he had not been informed of the photo in advance.
After onlookers laughed, Churchill lit and blew a cool cigar, then agreed to have his photo taken. But the cigar, conspicuously absent, seems to be the reason for Churchill’s troubled expression in the photo, according to Karsh’s recollection.
The photographer held out an ashtray for Churchill to put out the cigar, but he continued to smoke. Karsh waited some more, then “snatched the cigar from his mouth.”
“By the time I got back to my camera, it looked so belligerent it could have eaten me up,” he said. “That’s when I took the picture.”
In another photograph taken that day, Churchill displays a reluctant smile on camera. Another captures it share a laugh with King, Canadian Prime Minister.
Dumas said Karsh ran a studio at the hotel from 1972 to 1992. The Karsh family also lived at the hotel for 18 years from 1980 to 1998.
The photographer gave the hotel the original portrait, and there are about 15 more in the hotel. They have been removed until management can figure out what happened, Dumas said.
If anyone knows what happened, she hopes they will come forward.
“Maybe someone went to dinner somewhere and was bragging about their beautiful picture of Winston Churchill,” she said. “Move on. … It would be sad to leave this piece of history and this iconic symbol somewhere (other than) where it belongs, which is here at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier.”
Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY’s NOW team. She’s from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757 – and loves all things horror, witches, Christmas and food. Follow her on Twitter at @Saleen_Martin or email him at sdmartin@usatoday.com.