The Painter's Light

The telegram arrived in January 1943. Churchill had just finished the Casablanca Conference — the meeting where he and Roosevelt decided the Axis powers would surrender unconditionally or not at all. The war was turning. But Churchill wasn't going home.

He was going to Marrakech.

He called it "the most lovely spot in the world."

The destination was La Mamounia, the hotel built inside the gardens of a prince. The gardens were two hundred years old by then — twelve acres of orange trees and roses planted by Prince Al Mamoun in the 18th century. The French had added a hotel in 1923. Churchill had been coming since 1935.

What drew him was the light.

Churchill was a painter — over 500 canvases in his lifetime, a discipline he called "a companion with whom one may hope to walk a great part of life's journey." He worked in oils, fast, racing the sun. And nowhere had better light than Marrakech.

From the tower of the Mamounia, the Atlas Mountains catch the afternoon sun. The peaks turn pink, then gold, then purple. The snow holds the color longer than the rock. Churchill painted this view again and again.

On that January visit in 1943, he brought Roosevelt to see it.

The President had never been to Africa. Churchill insisted they drive to Marrakech before Roosevelt flew home — five hours on rough roads, through landscapes that looked nothing like Washington. At sunset, Churchill had Roosevelt carried to the tower. They watched the Atlas Mountains change color together.

Then Churchill painted it.

It was the only painting he made during the entire war. He gave it to Roosevelt as a memento of the day. The President hung it in his private study.

After Roosevelt died, his son sold it. It passed through private hands for decades. In 2011, Angelina Jolie bought it. Ten years later, she sold it at Christie's for $11.5 million — the highest price ever paid for a painting by a British artist at auction.

The tower is still there. La Mamounia still stands in those 18th-century gardens. The Atlas Mountains still turn pink at sunset.

The light Churchill chased is the same light falling on the peaks this afternoon.