A piece which bought at public sale final 12 months for simply over than £500 has now been attributed to JMW Turner, and can go underneath the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on 2 July with an estimate of as much as £300,000.
The work, The Rising Squall, Sizzling Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol, was bought early final 12 months at Dreweatts Donnington Priory, a regional UK auctioneer, for £524.80 together with VAT. Presently it was attributed to a follower of the UK 18th-century artist Julius Caesar Ibbetson and entitled Home by the Water in a Stormy Sky.
The portray—made in 1792 when Turner was 17—depicts a Bristol spa resort generally known as Sizzling Wells Home; it was exhibited on the Royal Academy in London shortly after the artist’s 18th birthday in 1793. The piece, which was first acquired by the Reverend Robert Nixon, was final exhibited in 1858 in Tazmania.
The work reemerged final 12 months on the regional public sale, the place it was bought by a collector who organized for it to be restored. Throughout conservation, Turner’s signature was found on the portray.
“We’re as sure because it’s doable to be that this portray is by Turner,” Julian Gascoigne, a senior director at Sotheby’s, informed The Guardian. He added that the portray had been examined by “all of the main Turner students alive as we speak who unanimously endorsed the attribution”.
“It offers us an actual perception into the ambition that Turner was clearly exhibiting at this early stage of his profession, and exhibits a stage of competency in oil portray, which is kind of a technical medium,” Gascoigne says of the work, which Sotheby’s has issued with an estimate of £200,000 to £300,000.
In the meantime, a spokesperson for Tate confirmed that the newly attributed work will probably be included within the forthcoming exhibition Turner and Constable at Tate Britain (27 November-12 April 2026). The Turner 250 pageant this 12 months celebrates the 250th anniversary of the artist’s beginning.
Dreweatts was contacted for additional remark.
