A painting by Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dali found in a house clearance is expected to fetch up to \u00a330,000 – after being bought for just \u00a3150.<\/p>\n
It was found in a house in Cambridge and has since been authenticated as an original.<\/p>\n
An anonymous art dealer purchased it and the mixed media piece will be up for sale at an auction in October.<\/p>\n
Gabrielle Downie, an associate at auctioneers Cheffins, said: “To handle a genuine rediscovery of a work by who is easily one of the most famous artists in the world, and the godfather of Surrealism, is a real honour.”<\/p>\n
The art dealer who purchased the piece discovered it had previously been offered for sale at Sotheby’s in the 1990s, fully attributed to Dali.<\/p>\n
“The loss of an attribution is quite rare in the modern artworld making this a significant rediscovery for Dali scholars,” said Ms Downie.<\/p>\n
“It has been an exciting process researching and having this painting authenticated and it is a testament to the seller’s significant art knowledge that he was able to spot this picture at a house clearance sale.<\/p>\n
“While Dali’s work is often some of the most recognisable, this is an unusual piece which shows a different side to his practice when working in watercolour.”<\/p>\n
The artwork, titled Vecchio Sultano, was discovered in a Cambridge house clearance sale in 2023.<\/p>\n
The image, made with watercolour paint and felt tip is an illustration of a scene from The Arabian Nights, a series of 500 pieces which Dali intended to create of Middle Eastern folktales, commissioned by wealthy Italian couple Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto.<\/p>\n
Ms Downie said the couple intended to commission Dali to illustrate a bible in 1963, but upon the artist’s insistence, he instead ended up illustrating scenes from 1,001 Nights – a collection of Middle Eastern folktales.<\/p>\n
It is thought Dali only completed 100 of the intended 500 works before the project was abandoned.<\/p>\n
“Of these 100, half remained with the publishing house Rizzoli and were either damaged or lost – the other 50 stayed with the Albarettos and were later inherited by their daughter, Christina, who was also Dali’s goddaughter,” said Ms Downie.<\/p>\n
“It is most likely that the work in question came from the batch of 50 which were retained and later lost by the publishers.”<\/p>\n
It has been certified as authentic by Dali expert Nicolas Descharnes and has a pre-sale estimate of \u00a320,000 to \u00a330,000.<\/p>\n
The painting will be offered for sale by Cheffins on 23 October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A painting by Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dali found in a house clearance is expected to fetch up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-44932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}