Winston Churchill’s artistic gift to his US ally comes home to a bidding war, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

According to the Timesonline of UK, “If it weren’t for painting, I couldn’t live, I couldn’t bear the strain of things,” Sir Winston Churchill once said. Now, one of the great statesman’s most important paintings has surfaced for the first time since he gave it to President Harry S. Truman more than half a century ago.

It was over lunch at 10 Downing Street in 1951 that Churchill presented Marrakesh, a vibrant image that captures the exotic colour and light of the Moroccan desert, as a gift to the US President.

Truman was overwhelmed, saying that he would treasure it as one of his “most valued possessions” and it has remained in the family ever since. But his daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel, is now selling it for financial reasons.

The painting, which dates from about 1948, will be the highlight of a sale of 20th-century British art at Sotheby’s in London on December 13. With its unbroken provenance to an important historical figure, its appearance on the open market is expected to attract strong interest from both collectors and historians.

Buyers may well ignore the £500,000 estimate, just as they ignored the £200,000 estimate in July when Sotheby’s auctioned Chartwell Landscape with Sheep, a view of Churchill’s home. That painting sold for £1 million – setting a new auction record, nearly double the previous figure for a Churchill painting. Frances Christie, Sotheby’s specialist in the 20th Century British Art department, said that such prices for Churchill had emerged recently. “It is only in the past two years that he’s broken the £100,000barrier,” she said. Although Marrakesh, as a Moroccan subject, is comparable in colours and tones to View of Tinherir, which sold in December for £612,800, this work is arguably superior in both composition and provenance.

Churchill (1874-1965) came to painting late, at the age of 40. Putting brush to canvas helped him to deal with the depression that overtook him when he was forced to resign as First Lord of the Admiralty after the disastrous Allied attack on the Dardanelles in the First World War. He then served in the Army on the Western Front, thinking that his political career was finished. He was rescued, he later said, on a family holiday by his discovery of the “muse of painting”. Although he was a physically strong and restless man, it proved an ideal balm and release.

Sir John Lavery, an official war artist in the First World War, said of Churchill’s talent: “Had he chosen painting instead of statemanship, I believe he would have been a great master with the brush.”

Churchill gave his most prized paintings to people he admired and wanted to honour with the most personal of gifts. Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower, Viscount Montgomery and General George C. Marshall were among those who received such tokens of friendship and respect.

With his gift to Truman, Churchill enclosed a note: “This picture . . . is about as presentable as anything I can produce. It shows the beautiful panorama of the snow-capped Atlas mountains in Marrakesh. This is the view I persuaded your predecessor [Roosevelt] to see before he left North Africa after the Casablanca Conference [in 1943].”

Truman wrote back: “I can’t find words adequate to express my appreciation of the beautiful picture . . . I shall treasure the picture as long as I live and it will be one of the most valued possessions I will be able to leave to Margaret when I pass on.”

He hung the painting in his living-room, where it remained until his death in 1972. Since then, it has been in the New York apartment of his daughter, who was 27 when Churchill gave the painting to her father.

Yesterday her son, Clifton Daniel, told The Times: “It’s hard for her to give up something of his, but she always has the memories.

“She loved Sir Winston, not only as a politician and world leader, but being around him.”

Painting for pleasure

L. S. Lowry A rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company, Manchester, until he retired in the 1950s. Kept his art to himself, ashamed of being thought of as a Sunday painter. Revered today for his industrial landscapes

The Prince of Wales An enthusiastic and accomplished amateur, often inspired by Scottish landscapes. His identity was disguised in 1987 when one of his Norfolk landscapes was displayed at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Ronnie Wood Guitarist with the Rolling Stones and the Faces, trained at Ealing College of Art. Has also made a name with oil paintings of fellow pop stars, horses and landscapes. Inspired by DalÍ and Warhol .