A portray by wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that was gifted to Greek shipping and delivery magnate Aristotle Onassis bought for $1.85 million at a Phillips auction in New York on Wednesday.

“The Moat, Breccles,” a signed 1921 oil landscape, went for inside of its pre-sale estimate cost of concerning $1.5 million and $2 million.

The sale was far fewer than the $11.6 million netted by one more Churchill painting offered by Angelina Jolie at Christie’s final March.

Inspite of failing to shatter records, the landscape which Churchill talked about in a December 1921 essay titled “Painting as a Pastime” — appealed to both equally background and celebrity buffs.

Churchill held the portray for 40 decades in advance of offering it in 1961, 4 many years before his dying, to his pal Onassis.

The tycoon was so happy of his present that he hung it in a spot of honor — at the rear of the bar of his yacht — along with functions by Vermeer, Gauguin, El Greco and Pissarro.

This super yacht, named “Christina” following Onassis’s daughter, was a previous Canadian Navy frigate, practically 100 meters extended. It experienced been a part of the Normandy landings prior to Onassis acquired the ship put up-war for $34,000.

Onassis experienced it lavishly renovated to the tune of $4 million, earning it “one particular of the most incredible constructions that floated,” Phillips Deputy Chairman Jean-Paul Engelen explained to AFP.

It was a favored accumulating location for the wealthy and well known, such as Elizabeth Taylor, John F. and Jackie Kennedy, Richard Burton, Grace Kelly, J. Paul Getty, Eva Peron and some others.

When Onassis died in 1975, seven years following his relationship to Jackie Kennedy, the yacht was offered and everything on board positioned in storage, right until his heirs recently determined to aspect with the portray.

To spur curiosity in the canvas, Phillips has recreated the bar on the “Christina” — regarded as Ari’s Bar — in its New York showroom, such as facsimiles of its famed whale tooth, and loaded the shelves with Pol Roger champagne, Churchill’s chosen bubbly.