The famed scowling portrait of Sir Winston Churchill has been returned to Canadian hands, with the photo turned over to representatives in a ceremony in Rome on Thursday.
Canadian Cultural Heritage Deputy Minister Isabelle Mondou, Fairview Chateau Laurier general manager Genevieve Dumas and Canada’s ambassador to Italy Elissa Goldberg met with Nicola Cassinelli, the man who bought what he didn’t know was a stolen portrait, to retrieve the photograph.
“This is a fantastic day,” Dumas said in an interview with Global News. “It’s just wonderful news to finally see the portrait that’s been gone for two-and-a-half years and to actually see the official portrait that’s been donated to the Fairmont Chateau Laurier by Karsh himself in 1998.
“It was emotional, I have to say, a lot of people were tearing up. We might think it’s just a photo but it’s not, it’s part of Canadian heritage, it’s part of Fairmont Chateau Laurier heritage, so it was just truly amazing.
The portrait, known as The Roaring Lion, is believed to have been stolen sometime between Christmas Day in 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, according to Canadian law enforcement, but it wasn’t discovered stolen until August 2022.
Before that discovery, police said, the portrait was sold at an auction house in London and bought by Cassinelli without any knowledge of its theft.
Last week, police announced they tracked down the portrait and arrested and charged a man in the theft.
Jeffrey Iain James Wood, from Powassan, Ont., has been charged with theft and trafficking of the portrait, with additional charges of forgery and mischief causing damage to property exceeding $5,000.
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Ottawa police had initially said his name was covered by a publication ban, but later said they had reviewed the ban and could release his name.
“He knows how much it’s important for Chateau Laurier, for Canada to get the picture back, so for him it was not even a question,” Dumas said. “He said he wants to take a selfie with the portrait in the background once we put it back on the wall.”
Churchill was originally photographed by Yousuf Karsh in 1941 following his speech to Canada’s House of Commons on Dec. 30, 1941. Karsh said he waited in the Speaker’s chamber after the speech, but the then-British prime minister “growled” he hadn’t been informed of the plan for a photograph.
Karsh recalled that the prime minister refused to put down his cigar — and it’s what happened next that allowed him to immortalize the scowl.
“Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, ‘Forgive me, sir,’ and plucked the cigar out of his mouth,” Karsh recalled, according to a write-up on the Estate of Yousuf Karsh website.
“By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph.”
A replica of the Roaring Lion portrait is seen in the home of Nicola Cassinelli, who bought the original portrait from a London auction house in 2022 without realizing it had actually been stolen. Cassinelli returned the original portrait to Canadian officials and bought a poster of the photo, which now hangs where the original portrait hung in his home.
Nicola Cassinelli
Mondou told reporters on Thursday that Canada was “grateful” to see the return of the portrait.
“The ‘Roaring Lion’ is a 20th -century treasure and it launched the international career of Yousuf Karsh and it has since become one of the most widely produced images in the history of photography,” she said. “We are so pleased and so grateful to bring this special photographic print back to its proper home.”
The hotel’s general manager told reporters last week that once the portrait is returned, it would be very secure going forward, noting the hotel implemented a new security system for all of Karsh’s portraits after The Roaring Lion was discovered stolen.
— with files from the Canadian Press
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