It took officials at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel at least eight months before they realized the photo, which could be worth more than $100,000, had been exchanged, CNN affiliate CTV reported. wrote Genevieve Dumas in a Facebook post. “The hotel is incredibly proud to host this amazing Karsh collection, which was safely installed in 1998.” The portrait, created by Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1941, is “one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography,” according to Karsh’s website. In 2016, the photo became the face of the Bank of England’s five pound note. The original was hanging at the Chateau Laurier hotel until a date that officials believe was likely between Dec. 25, 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, the hotel’s general manager Geneviève Dumas told CTV. Last weekend, hotel employees noticed that the photo was hung improperly and the frame didn’t match the others in the space, CTV reported. Hotel officials then used photos submitted by the public to determine when the original portrait and frame were deactivated. The director of marketing for the Chateau Laurier hotel told CNN that the investigation into the portrait’s disappearance is ongoing.
The theft was likely an “inside job,” Robert Wittman, a former FBI art crime investigator, told CTV. “So usually when a situation like this happens, it’s not shoplifting, it’s not just a break-in; it’s someone inside who had access, who knew what they were looking for, knew what the security measures were that protected the piece and that (it was) in position to defeat these measures because they had inside information,” Wittman told CTV. The beloved black-and-white photograph captures Churchill sulking moments after Kars took a cigar out of the prime minister’s mouth to take the picture. “When I returned to my camera, he looked so belligerent that he could have swallowed me. It was at that moment that I took the picture,” Karsh had written about the photo. “I knew after I took it that it was an important photo, but I could never have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography.” for two decades, according to his estate, and when he moved out, Kars left a collection of his photographs — including one of Churchill — at the hotel. “His relationship with the hotel was very deep and very warm,” Jerry Fielder, Kars’ estate manager, told CTV. “That was a very special print for him, and it was a really beautiful print. So it has a very special meaning.” Fairmont Château Laurier urged anyone with information about the stolen photo to contact local authorities immediately.