An iconic portrait of Winston Churchill taken in 1941 has vanished from an Ottawa hotel and has been replaced by a forgery.
Yousuf Karsh captured “the Roaring Lion” immediately after Churchill delivered a wartime speech to Canada’s parliament.
On August 19, a staff member at the Château Laurier hotel realized the photograph had been altered.
The incident is being investigated by police.
The shot is one of the most iconic of Churchill ever taken, and it shows the leader on Parliament Hill minutes after Karsh famously removed a cigar from Churchill’s mouth.
“I offered an ashtray to him, but he refused…
I waited as he continued to chomp on his cigar. I sat and waited “Karsh later remembered. “Then I took a step toward him and, without thinking, but always respectfully, I muttered ‘pardon me, sir,’ and removed the cigar from his mouth.”
When Karsh returned to his camera, Churchill appeared “so belligerent he might have devoured me.”
“I took the photograph at that very moment,” he added.
The Château Laurier first discovered anything was wrong on Friday, when workers noted that the frame of the photograph didn’t match that of other Karsh images in the same area.
Following an investigation and consultation with Karsh’s estate, the hotel decided that the portrait had been “replaced with a copy of the original,” according to a statement released to local media. It is unknown how long has passed since the original photograph was taken.
“This audacious conduct has severely grieved us,” the hotel’s general manager, Geneviève Dumas, said in a statement. “The hotel is ecstatic to be home to this magnificent Karsh collection, which was safely placed in 1998.”
The hotel is managed by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a division of AccorHotels based in Toronto.
The missing photograph has been reported to Ottawa Police, who have initiated an inquiry.
Karsh, who died in 2002, is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most famous portrait photographers, with subjects ranging from Queen Elizabeth II, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King to Fidel Castro, Muhammad Ali, and Andy Warhol.
He was a long-time resident of Château Laurier, where he ran a studio from 1972 to 1992.
