Rome, from Mount Aventine sells for £30.3 million at Sotheby’s London EVENING SALE OF OLD MASTER & BRITISH PAINTINGS Soars above Estimate to £54 million (€68.6 million/ $84.4 million), Confirming Sotheby’s long-held Leadership in the Category.
At Sotheby’s London, one of the last great Turner masterpieces remaining in private hands set a world auction record for the artist*, selling for a staggering £30.3 million/ $47.4 million/ €38.6 million (est. £15-20m / $24.1-32.1m / €19-25.3m). This result also represents the highest price at auction for any pre-20th century British artist and the second highest price for any work ever sold at auction in the Old Master and British Paintings category. Four bidders competed for the work tonight, driving the work high above its pre-sale estimate. The sale coincided with a wider moment of Turner mania, with the groundbreaking exhibition of “Late Turner” at the Tate and Mike Leigh’s sensational “Mr Turner”.
The spectacular work by Turner was the highlight of a high performing Old Master & British Paintings Evening sale which totalled £53,972,000 (€68,647,191/$84,423,002), well above the high estimate (est. £32.2 – 44.9 million).
Painted in 1835 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836, when Turner was 61 years old, Rome, from Mount Aventine is one of the artist’s supreme achievements and arguably the most important view of the Italian city ever painted. The large-scale oil painting is further distinguished by its exceptional state of preservation, as well as a prestigious and unbroken provenance. Until this evening’s sale, the work had changed hands only once in 1878, when it was acquired by the 5th Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister of Great Britain. The painting had since remained undisturbed in the Rosebery collection.
