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July 7, 2010
Turner's Modern Rome (you know, in ruins) sells for an astonishing amount of money
A painting of Rome by the 19th- century British artist J.M.W. Turner, once owned by a member of the Rothschild family, sold tonight at a London auction for a record 29.7 million pounds ($45.1 million).Turner's 1839 canvas "Modern Rome -- Campo Vaccino," a twilit view of some of the Italian capital's most famous monuments, had been expected to fetch between 12 million pounds and 18 million pounds at a Sotheby's Old Master and Early British Paintings sale. It was bought in the room by the London dealer Hazlitt Gooden and Fox acting on behalf of the Getty Museum.
. . .
The 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter) Turner sold today was the artist's last depiction of Rome and exhibited at the Royal Academy. It was being offered for the first time since 1878, when it was purchased on honeymoon by Hannah Rothschild and her husband, the 5th Earl of Rosebery, who later became the U.K.'s Prime Minister.
The couple paid 4,450 guineas -- an old British currency - - for the work, and it hung in the family's country mansion, Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire, and their London residences for a century. It was in unrestored condition in its original frame, said the New York-based auction house.
Click and see - the photo is pretty small, but not impossibly so.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at July 7, 2010 4:38 PM