What's new

Churchill could paint too

A painting by Winston Churchill of a Moroccan sunset - a view he loved so much that he invited President Franklin D. Roosevelt to see it years later - is going on the auction block next week.

Sunset Over the Atlas Mountains, a vibrant landscape painted in 1935 from Churchill's balcony at the Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech, is expected to bring at least $600,000 at Bonhams New York on April 23.

Churchill invited Roosevelt to travel with him to Marrakech after a conference in Casablanca in 1943 so he could experience the beautiful view for himself.

After Churchill's death in 1965, the 20-inch-by-24-inch oil went to a daughter, Lady Sarah Audley, who sold it to a private collector in Texas, who in turn sold it in 1992 to the family of the current San Francisco owner, whose name Bonhams did not disclose.

Malcolm Walker, European paintings specialist at Bonhams, said the value of Churchill's paintings has skyrocketed in the past year and a half.

Churchill, who began painting for relaxation and loved working in brilliant colors, often did not sign his work so as not to influence judges, Walker said.

Walker said Churchill loved Morocco, which he visited often. Marrakech, a work depicting the city's gates against the backdrop of the Atlas mountains, was painted by Churchill in 1948 and presented to President Truman in 1951. It sold at auction for $949,918 in December 2007. Earlier that year, his painting Chartwell Landscape With Sheep sold for $2.06 million - a record for the artist.

The April 23 auction will be simulcast to Bonhams' San Francisco salesroom.

Rowling: Potter book is theft

J.K. Rowling says the Harry Potter characters she created are as dear as her children, too precious to allow an inferior Potter encyclopedia to be published without letting the world know the ordeal is draining her of her will to write.

"I really don't want to cry because I'm British, you know," the mother of three told a judge on Monday in US district court as she described how much her characters and seven books mean to her. "You know, these books, they saved me, not just in the very obvious material sense, although they did do that. ... I would have to say that there was a time when they saved my sanity."

Last year, Rowling sued Michigan-based RDR Books to stop publication of Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon, claiming copyright infringement. Vander Ark runs the popular Harry Potter Lexicon website, and RDR wants to publish a print version of the site and charge $24.95.

RDR publisher Roger Rapoport, who testified in the case on Monday, was to return to the witness stand on Tuesday.

Rowling claims the lexicon is nothing more than a rearrangement of her material, and she told the judge it copied so much of her work that it amounted to plagiarism. She said she was "extremely shocked" because Vander Ark had said on his site he would not publish a book.

New Discovery for China

Discovery Networks Asia launched a Planet Green programming block in China yesterday. The program features both Asia-relevant stories produced out of the region and global specials drawing from Discovery Communications' original content.

The programs will be broadcast on 26 TV stations in China, starting with Five Ways to Save the World, a documentary on scientists' bold and creative plans to prevent global warming. The programming block is part of Planet Green, Discovery Communications' global initiative with a commitment to document, preserve and celebrate the planet.

Agencies-China Daily

(China Daily 04/17/2008 page18)