[Winston Churchill] — Yousuf Karsh, photographer | Vintage silver gelatin print, signed by Karsh, 1941 [printed ca. 1951]

 [Winston Churchill] — Yousuf Karsh, photographer 

Vintage silver gelatin print, signed by Karsh, 1941 [printed ca. 1951]

Vintage black and white photograph (16 x 20 in.; 406 x 508, framed to 23 x 29 in.; 584 x 737 mm), signed by Karsh.

YOUSUF KARSH'S ICONIC PORTRAIT OF A SCOWLING WINSTON CHURCHILL (“THE ANGRY LION”)

The image was taken 30 December 1941 in an ante-room of the Ottawa House of Commons following Churchill’s address to the Canadian Parliament. Churchill was, at the time, “in [a] happy mood..." as official biographer Sir Martin Gilbert wrote in his own memoir, In Search of Churchill. "He had just made a successful speech ['Some chicken... some neck']. He had left the parliamentary chamber smiling... Karsh had hoped for something stern and warlike. To secure the picture he wanted, he went up to Churchill and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. 'By the time I got back to my camera,' Karsh later recalled, '[Churchill] looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the picture.'” This monumental example was printed by Karsh in the 1950s at the largest size that he employed. The print is signed by Karsh with a white stylus on the lower right corner of the image: “J Karsh of Ottawa.”

RARELY SEEN AT THIS SCOPE AND SCALE