A particularly well-preserved painting of Rome by British artist J M W Turner went on display in the city on Tuesday for the first time ahead of its auction in December.
“Rome, From Mount Aventine”, first exhibited in 1836, has been sold only twice and still carries the artist’s fingerprints and hairs from his brush.
“The paint is as fresh and as three-dimensional and as rich as it was the day that he applied it to the canvas”, Julian Gascoigne, Sotheby’s senior specialist in British paintings, said, describing it as an “exceptional painting”.
Presented at Rome’s Palazzo Rondinini, the work has never been re-lined or cleaned and remains on Turner’s original stretcher. He used techniques associated with watercolour painting in oil, applying translucent layers to create its distinctive hazy effect.
The technique later influenced artists including Claude Monet and the French Impressionists, as well as Mark Rothko, Gascoigne said.
The painting will remain in Rome for three days before travelling to Hong Kong and New York ahead of its London sale. Sotheby’s expects it to fetch around £50 million, potentially breaking Turner’s auction record, which was set by the same painting when it sold in 2014 for £30.3 million.
Commissioned by Turner’s friend and patron Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, the painting was acquired in 1878 by Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, who later became British prime minister. It remained with the Rosebery family until 2014.
Mario Tavella, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, said he hoped the work would eventually enter a public museum. Asked about security following recent art thefts across Europe, he said all necessary precautions had been taken to protect the painting. — AFP
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