Canadian and Italian dignitaries marked the successful recovery of an original print of a famous photograph of Winston Churchill known as The Roaring Lion on Sept. 19. The photo had gone missing from an Ottawa hotel, starting a two-year search.
Taken by Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1941 after the British wartime prime minister gave a speech to the Canadian Parliament during World War II, the photo is one of the most famous portraits in the world. It is also the image on the U.K.’s £5 banknote. The photograph shows Churchill with a belligerent expression, presumably due to Karsh taking a cigar out of Churchill’s mouth just moments before. In 1998, Karsh and his wife gifted an original signed print to the Fairmont Château Laurier hotel in Ottowa, Canada.
According to Canadian police, the portrait was likely stolen between Dec. 25, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2022, and replaced with a fake amid strict COVID lockdowns. A staff member at the hotel was the first to discover the swap months later, on Aug. 19, 2022, upon noticing the frame hung improperly and differed from the others.
Ottawa police successfully tracked the stolen photo to a private collection in Italy. The police say the private buyer and the London auction house involved in the sale were unaware of the true story behind the piece. Fortunately, the buyer quickly agreed to return the iconic Churchill photograph to the hotel once he learned of the theft. He attended the ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Rome, where the Italian carabinieri police handed the photo portrait to the Canadian ambassador to Italy, Elissa Goldberg.