London, July 14, 2007 - A painting drawn by Sir Winston Churchill of his Chartwell estate near Westerham in Kent fetched one million pounds at Sotheby's in London yesterday, a world record auction price for a work by Britain's wartime prime minister.
 
The 76 inch x 63.5 inch landscape was painted in the war years of the early 1940s, about 20 years after Churchill moved into the much-modified Elizabethan manor house. The picture was bought by a private collector.

The canvas - entitled Chartwell: Landscape with Sheep - eclipsed the previous price for a work by Churchill, established last December, when his View of Tinherir, an oasis in North Africa, which he gave to his Chief of Staff, General Sir George Marshall, fetched 612,800 pounds.

Paintings by Churchill have doubled in value in the past 10 years. In 2005, On the Rance, near St Malo sold for 344, 000 pounds at Christie's.

Chartwell not only became the family home and a beautiful venue for entertaining guests, but also Churchill's cherished country retreat and a constant source of inspiration until his death in 1965, reports The Telegraph.

Churchill and his wife Clementine had bought the house in 1922 - a purchase made possible by an unexpected inheritance from a distant cousin - but it was not until the spring of 1924 that they were finally able to move in.

The landscape sold yesterday was first given by Churchill to his friend, Henry Luce, the prominent American publisher of Time Magazine.

Churchill, who died in 1965, began painting as a hobby which continued throughout his life. (ANI)