A flower painting with a family history is heading to auction. Winston Churchill's Amaryllis Lily, painted in 1948, will be offered at Christie's Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale in London on October 21 with an estimate of £300,000 to £500,000 ($396,000–$661,000). The work depicts a red amaryllis belladonna — also known as a March lily — blooming in a plant pot on a table against a dark backdrop. Churchill gave the painting to his daughter, Lady Mary Soames, who donated it in 1995 to the Churchill Fellowship. Proceeds from the sale will support the fellowship's Making Space for the Arts program. Christie's head of the modern British and Irish art evening sale praised the picture as evidence of Churchill's command of color and composition, noting the influence of William Nicholson in its restrained arrangement and bold palette, and the confidence the wartime leader had developed as a still-life painter by the late 1940s. The sale lands amid a banner year for Churchill the painter. The Wallace Collection in London is currently staging the first major UK retrospective of his work since his death, bringing together more than 50 paintings spanning his output from the First World War to the 1960s. Renewed museum attention has helped keep demand for his pictures steady. Churchill's paintings remain a reliable draw at auction: his record stands at £1.8 million ($2.8 million), set at Sotheby's in 2014 for The Goldfish Pond at Chartwell. With a charitable beneficiary and a direct line of descent from the artist's own family, Amaryllis Lily is positioned as one of the season's more personable lots.