Art world stunned by ‘fantastic price’ for rare Constable at North Yorkshire auctioneers
A rare early sketch by British master landscape painter John Constable has sold for £320,000 at a North Yorkshire auctioneers – £100k more than expected.
Executed circa 1809-10, Dedham Vale looking towards Langham was expected to fetch from £150,000 to £200,000 when it was put up for sale in Leyburn at the headquarters of Tennants Auctioneers, which also has an office on Montpellier Road in Harrogate.
Measuring just 12 by 15 inches, the sketch by John Constable (1776-1837) hailed from a private family collection in North Yorkshire and was previously unrecorded in literature on this iconic artist.
Jane Tennant, Director and Auctioneer at Tennants said: “Constable is such an icon of British art history, and we are delighted to have handled such an important work of art and achieved such a fantastic price for the vendors.
"It is rare for an unrecorded Constable to come onto the open market, and it attracted a good deal of interest.”
A plein-air sketch of the countryside surrounding Constable’s childhood home of East Bergholt in Suffolk, the painting is believed to be the basis of Dedham Vale (c.1825), which is now in the Staatsgemäldesammlungen Neue Pinakothek in Munich.
After completing his studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 1802, the young Constable abandoned the classical academic landscape painting of previous generations, letting ‘Nature herself’ guide his work.
Returning to his Suffolk home, he began created plein-air sketches out amongst the fields and byways, a practice he continued until around 1829, and developed a colourful and highly expressive oil sketching style.
Dedham Vale looking towards Langham sold for a hammer price of £320,000 in the British, European and Sporting Art Sale held at Tennants Auctioneers on Saturday, March 15.
In a strong sale overall, further notable results were seen for The Church of Santa Maria della Salute, Venice by Antoinetta Brandeis (1849-1926), which sold for £5,200, and Still Life of Assorted Summer Flowers in a Glazed Vase Before a Window by Dorothea Sharp (1874-1955), which sold for £9,000.
The sale realised a total hammer price of £427,010 for the 91 lots, an 89% sold rate.