This season re-discovered Constables were meant to be the stars of the Old Master sales. It didn’t quite work out that way and Colin Gleadell has the details in the Telegraph:
A painting of clouds, which had been catalogued as by a follower of Constable and estimated at £500 to £800 by Sussex auctioneers Gorringes last summer before selling for £24,000, re-emerged at Sotheby’s last week, fully catalogued as by Constable with a £300,000 estimate, but attracted no bids. Another painting, sold by Bonhams in Edinburgh in 2004 as “19th-century British school” for £2,820, was re-presented as a Constable study for his painting The White Horse with a £40,000 estimate, and met the same fate. However, a Constable oil-on-paper sketch, identified as a view in Stratford St Mary near East Bergholt, caught the eye of leading Constable collector David Thomson. He had arrived at Sotheby’s en famille and allowed his daughter to out-gun the competition and buy the sketch for £82,850.
Market News (Telegraph)
