The frame looked off. Then hotel finds Winston Churchill photo was subbed with a fake

An iconic photograph of Winston Churchill was stolen from a historic Canadian hotel and swapped with a fake, according to the hotel’s managers.

Inside the Fairmont Château Laurier — an elegant, luxury hotel in Ottawa, Canada, just steps away from the Parliament building — is a “Reading Lounge” that boasts a collection of original photographs from the famous photographer Yousuf Karsh, CBC reported.

One of those photographs, however, was not what it seemed.

A hotel employee walked by the photograph of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on Friday Aug. 19, and noticed the portrait was not hung quite right, The Vancouver Sun reported.

This particular frame didn’t match the rest of the collection, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

When the hotel flipped the portrait over, they discovered a forgery of the photographer’s signature, Jerry Fielder, Karsh’s estate director, told CBC.

“These days you can’t make a Karsh photograph but you can make a copy that might pass for a little while,” the estate director told the Vancouver Sun, “but you really can’t duplicate the signature.”

“I could tell that it was not the real thing,” the director told the outlet.

The portrait of Churchill, known as “The Roaring Lion,” was photographed in 1941 when he visited Ottawa and spoke to the Canadian Parliament about World War II, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

Karsh waited for Churchill after the speech when Churchill, puffing on a cigar, allowed him to take a single picture, the photographer’s website recounts. Karsh pulled away the cigar and, moments later, snapped what became one of the most iconic pictures of Churchill.

Between 1941 and 1992, a number of original prints were made of “The Roaring Lion” before the photograph was given to the Library and Archives Canada and could no longer be printed, The Vancouver Sun reported.

A collection of 15 of Karsh’s photographs were installed at the Fairmont Château Laurier — where Karsh and his wife lived for nearly 20 years and where Karsh operated his studio for even longer — in 1998, CBC reported.

The original Churchill print hung in the reading lounge until — at some unknown time — it was swapped for a fake, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

“We are deeply saddened by this brazen act,” the hotel said in an Aug. 22 statement. The hotel removed the other Karsh photographs from the reading lounge until they can be properly secured, CBC reported.

Ottawa police told the Vancouver Sun that they received a report about the theft and have launched an investigation.

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