Until last week, “Roaring Lion,” a famous photograph of scowling Winston Churchill, hung on display for decades at Ottawa’s Château Laurier hotel. But a hotel employee recently noticed that the portrait’s frame no longer matched those of the five other Yousuf Karsh photographs on display. The overseer of Karsh’s estate, Jerry Fielder, confirmed that the signature was forged: This image was a fake. Ottawa police are now investigating the heist. The portrait, which was used on the British five-pound note in 2016, has only grown more valuable since the 1990s, when negatives of Karsh’s work were given to the Library and Archives Canada. No prints are allowed. Karsh is an acclaimed Armenian-Canadian portraitist who lived in the hotel for nearly two decades; it held his first exhibition in 1936 and his sixth-floor studio until 1992. Over the course of Karsh’s career, his subjects included Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Queen Elizabeth, and Ernest Hemingway. He met Churchill in 1941 after the British Prime Minister's address to the Canadian Parliament. When Karsh asked to make a portrait, he recalled Churchill demanding, “Why was I not told?”—and, when Karsh confiscated his cigar for the photograph, a look “so belligerent he could devour me.”