Press Association
Salvador Dali’s Vecchio Sultano was found and bought for £150 before being sold for thousands
An artwork by Salvador Dali bought for £150 by an antique and art dealer in a house clearance has sold for tens of thousands of pounds at auction.
Vecchio Sultano, a mixed-media piece made with watercolour paint and a felt-tip pen, is an illustration of the Arabian Nights and was found in a house in Cambridge.
It was authenticated by a Dali expert before being sold by Cheffin Auctioneers for what is believed to be more than the estimated £20,000 to £30,000.
The auction house said it was one of a series of 500 pieces the Spanish surrealist artist intended to create to reflect the Middle Eastern folktales, commissioned by a wealthy Italian couple.
Gabrielle Downie from Cheffin said: “The seller, who wishes to remain anonymous, completed the initial research on the painting and discovered that the picture had been offered for sale at Sotheby’s in the 1990s, fully attributed to Dali.
“The loss of an attribution is quite rare in the modern art world making this a significant rediscovery for Dali scholars.
“To handle a genuine rediscovery of a work by someone who is easily one of the most famous artists in the world and the godfather of Surrealism is a real honour.”
She added the piece, measuring just 38cm (15in) by 29cm (11in), was unusual and showed a different side to the artist’s practice when working in watercolour.
PA
The artwork created using watercolour and a felt-tip pen is seen as a bit of a departure from Dali’s more recognisable works
Dali only completed 100 of the intended 500 works, and half of those remained with the publishing house Rizzoli, said Cheffins.
The other 50 stayed with the Italian family Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto, who commissioned them and which were later inherited by their daughter Christina, who was also Dali’s goddaughter.
Ms Downie said: “It is most likely that the work in question came from the batch of 50 which were retained and later lost by the publishers.”
Salvador Dali being interviewed by the BBC in 1951. The Spanish artist died in 1989.