A vintage gelatin silver print of The Roaring Lion, Yousuf Karsh's portrait of Winston Churchill, is the most celebrated photographic image ever made of the wartime leader. This is an early printing, made circa 1944 within a few years of the 1941 negative, and bears the embossed KARSH, OTTAWA studio credit at the lower right.
The portrait belongs to one of the decisive moments of the Second World War. Karsh made it in the first weeks after Pearl Harbor, with the United States newly drawn into the conflict and its outcome still far from certain. Churchill had crossed the Atlantic aboard the battleship HMS Duke of York to confer with Roosevelt, sailing from the Clyde in December 1941 through submarine waters and heavy winter seas. He spent Christmas at the White House as the president's guest, addressed a joint meeting of the United States Congress on December 26, and traveled on to Ottawa, where on December 30 he addressed the Canadian Parliament, in a speech remembered for his scorn of the prediction that Britain would have her neck wrung like a chicken. Karsh was waiting as he left the chamber.
Allowed only two minutes, and faced with a subject who would not set down his cigar, Karsh stepped forward, said "Forgive me, sir," and drew the cigar from Churchill's mouth. The expression that followed, fixed and glowering, was caught in the instant the photographer returned to his camera. It became the face of British resistance, the image of a nation that would not be brought to terms. Churchill, his composure recovered, told the photographer that he could even make a roaring lion stand still for a portrait, and the portrait has carried the name ever since.
The present print is distinguished by the characteristics of Karsh's earliest work from the negative. The composition retains the fuller background above the sitter's head, the area Karsh reduced in his later printings to draw the eye more closely onto Churchill and concentrate the force of the image. That fuller field, together with the warm tonality of the paper and the character of the surface, places the print among the early examples and accords with the circa 1944 date recorded in its provenance.
The photograph carries a documented chain of ownership reaching directly to the photographer. A manuscript note on the reverse records that it was given by Karsh in 1944 to the president of Canadian Kodak and passed in 1972 to a retiring employee of the company. For a Karsh print, provenance of this kind, originating with Karsh himself, is of the first importance and is among the strongest assurances of authenticity such a print can carry.
Few photographs have entered public life so completely. The Roaring Lion is among the most widely reproduced portraits ever made, and has appeared on the Bank of England five-pound note since 2013. An early print traceable to Karsh belongs to the small body of examples that unite the icon with the hand of its maker.
The print is in excellent original condition, the image is clear and well-contrasted with the warm tonality characteristic of an early gelatin silver print, and the KARSH, OTTAWA credit blindstamp is crisp at the lower right. It is presented in its period mount, and the manuscript provenance note is preserved on the reverse.
A vintage gelatin silver print of The Roaring Lion, Yousuf Karsh's portrait of Winston Churchill, is the most celebrated photographic image ever made of the wartime leader. This is an early printing, made circa 1944 within a few years of the 1941 negative, and bears the embossed KARSH, OTTAWA studio credit at the lower right.
The portrait belongs to one of the decisive moments of the Second World War. Karsh made it in the first weeks after Pearl Harbor, with the United States newly drawn into the conflict and its outcome still far from certain. Churchill had crossed the Atlantic aboard the battleship HMS Duke of York to confer with Roosevelt, sailing from the Clyde in December 1941 through submarine waters and heavy winter seas. He spent Christmas at the White House as the president's guest, addressed a joint meeting of the United States Congress on December 26, and traveled on to Ottawa, where on December 30 he addressed the Canadian Parliament, in a speech remembered for his scorn of the prediction that Britain would have her neck wrung like a chicken. Karsh was waiting as he left the chamber.
Allowed only two minutes, and faced with a subject who would not set down his cigar, Karsh stepped forward, said "Forgive me, sir," and drew the cigar from Churchill's mouth. The expression that followed, fixed and glowering, was caught in the instant the photographer returned to his camera. It became the face of British resistance, the image of a nation that would not be brought to terms. Churchill, his composure recovered, told the photographer that he could even make a roaring lion stand still for a portrait, and the portrait has carried the name ever since.
The present print is distinguished by the characteristics of Karsh's earliest work from the negative. The composition retains the fuller background above the sitter's head, the area Karsh reduced in his later printings to draw the eye more closely onto Churchill and concentrate the force of the image. That fuller field, together with the warm tonality of the paper and the character of the surface, places the print among the early examples and accords with the circa 1944 date recorded in its provenance.
The photograph carries a documented chain of ownership reaching directly to the photographer. A manuscript note on the reverse records that it was given by Karsh in 1944 to the president of Canadian Kodak and passed in 1972 to a retiring employee of the company. For a Karsh print, provenance of this kind, originating with Karsh himself, is of the first importance and is among the strongest assurances of authenticity such a print can carry.
Few photographs have entered public life so completely. The Roaring Lion is among the most widely reproduced portraits ever made, and has appeared on the Bank of England five-pound note since 2013. An early print traceable to Karsh belongs to the small body of examples that unite the icon with the hand of its maker.
The print is in excellent original condition, the image is clear and well-contrasted with the warm tonality characteristic of an early gelatin silver print, and the KARSH, OTTAWA credit blindstamp is crisp at the lower right. It is presented in its period mount, and the manuscript provenance note is preserved on the reverse.
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