Winston Churchill portrait stolen from Château Laurier recovered
September 24, 2024 9:08 AM Subscribe
The brazen heist, which made international headlines, occurred during a COVID-19-related lockdown in Ottawa some time between Christmas Day 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, the hotel determined. No one was in the building during that period. The photo had been gifted to the hotel by Karsh himself and had been on public display at the Château for decades until it was removed from the wall and replaced by a fake, which then hung in its place, unnoticed, for eight months.
A very over-dramatic CBC video with more information from 2 years ago called this 'The art heist of the century'. The portrait was returned last week.
From Ian Austen's NYT Canada Letter newsletter (I don't know how to find it online, I could only find the latest issue)
While using rooms in the hotel as a base during the trucker convoy that paralyzed Ottawa for much of February 2022, I learned that Mr. Karsh’s apartment had been turned into a suite used mostly by visiting dignitaries. His studio, however, had been chopped up into rooms.
That spring, at roughly the midpoint between the Churchill photo’s theft and the crime’s discovery, the hotel allowed me to photograph a part of the suite on 8-by-10-inch film — Mr. Karsh’s format — using Kodak lenses from the 1940s and ’50s that were also Mr. Karsh’s preference.
The Churchill portrait was pivotal to the career of Mr. Karsh, who died in 2002. It appeared on the cover of Life magazine and has been widely reproduced since it was taken in 1941. The image set Mr. Karsh on the path to becoming known worldwide as a photographer of the famous. So on my way out of the hotel, I decided to photograph it as well.
The print looked very wrong to my eyes. It seemed to be an inkjet print, certainly not one of Mr. Karsh’s gold-toned photographic prints. The photo was flat and lacked the richly detailed blacks of his other prints, which were mainly hung in another part of the lounge. But I didn’t raise it with the hotel staff member escorting me, as I was already running late. And I thought that given the photo’s importance, the hotel might have substituted a copy for security reasons.
Looking closely at the photo I took now, the thief’s decoy print showed other signs that something was amiss. No training in forensics is necessary to see that the signature is a crude forgery. And the photo was hanging on a cord hooked onto a crooked hanger, which is clearly visible above it.
posted by stevil at 10:02 AM on September 24 [4 favorites]
While using rooms in the hotel as a base during the trucker convoy that paralyzed Ottawa for much of February 2022, I learned that Mr. Karsh’s apartment had been turned into a suite used mostly by visiting dignitaries. His studio, however, had been chopped up into rooms.
That spring, at roughly the midpoint between the Churchill photo’s theft and the crime’s discovery, the hotel allowed me to photograph a part of the suite on 8-by-10-inch film — Mr. Karsh’s format — using Kodak lenses from the 1940s and ’50s that were also Mr. Karsh’s preference.
The Churchill portrait was pivotal to the career of Mr. Karsh, who died in 2002. It appeared on the cover of Life magazine and has been widely reproduced since it was taken in 1941. The image set Mr. Karsh on the path to becoming known worldwide as a photographer of the famous. So on my way out of the hotel, I decided to photograph it as well.
The print looked very wrong to my eyes. It seemed to be an inkjet print, certainly not one of Mr. Karsh’s gold-toned photographic prints. The photo was flat and lacked the richly detailed blacks of his other prints, which were mainly hung in another part of the lounge. But I didn’t raise it with the hotel staff member escorting me, as I was already running late. And I thought that given the photo’s importance, the hotel might have substituted a copy for security reasons.
Looking closely at the photo I took now, the thief’s decoy print showed other signs that something was amiss. No training in forensics is necessary to see that the signature is a crude forgery. And the photo was hanging on a cord hooked onto a crooked hanger, which is clearly visible above it.
posted by stevil at 10:02 AM on September 24 [4 favorites]
The time is nigh for Canadian gaffes and practical amusements.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:33 AM on September 24
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:33 AM on September 24
A solid gold toilet stolen
from his birthplace,
(Blenheim Palace)
The artwork, titled ,
America ,
never recovered.
posted by hortense at 10:38 AM on September 24 [1 favorite]
from his birthplace,
(Blenheim Palace)
The artwork, titled ,
America ,
never recovered.
posted by hortense at 10:38 AM on September 24 [1 favorite]
Surely that would be a silvern heist?
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 10:51 AM on September 24
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 10:51 AM on September 24
WSC was feeling pretty chuffed in December 1941, as Hitler had conveniently declared war on the USA, escalating what was a quasi-war in the Atlantic as the US Navy started policing the western Atlantic as a no-go zone for the u boats that fall.
The bit he had in his autobiography/history of WW2 about this was quite demonstrative of his emotions of being saved:
". . . after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutiliated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force."
The following 6+ months of 1942 weren't so hot for the British Empire, which is why he called his 4th book in the WW2 series "The Hinge of Fate" . . .
posted by torokunai at 11:02 AM on September 24 [3 favorites]
The bit he had in his autobiography/history of WW2 about this was quite demonstrative of his emotions of being saved:
". . . after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutiliated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force."
The following 6+ months of 1942 weren't so hot for the British Empire, which is why he called his 4th book in the WW2 series "The Hinge of Fate" . . .
posted by torokunai at 11:02 AM on September 24 [3 favorites]
Karsh previously on MeFi; includes a link to the story behind the Churchill portrait, which I have always found amusing.
posted by TedW at 8:11 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
posted by TedW at 8:11 AM on September 25 [1 favorite]
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posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:30 AM on September 24 [1 favorite]