Sketch found in South Wales home expected to fetch £10k

A SKETCH by one of Britain’s most famous artists is set to fetch a five-figure sum at auction after being unearthed in a South Wales house.

JMW Turner’s A Slate Quarry in North Wales will go under the hammer in Cardiff later this month, with a guide price of between £10,000 and £15,000.

It was uncovered with a number of other old artworks from a property in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Auctioneer Ben Rogers Jones said: “The lady was thinning out her late husband’s paintings.

“It was a large quantity of mostly 19thcentury watercolours and sketches, which were generally of an academic nature.

“But this one stood out as being painted earlier and caught our eye as a bit special. On the back of the frame was a handwritten note of it being Turner and having been bought at auction at Christies auction rooms in London, in 1978.

“We were able to trace the painting to the auction on November 21 of that year, selling for £1,400.”

He added: “It is truly incredible that this was under our noses in a collection in the Vale of Glamorgan.”

Turner, who lived from 1775 to 1851, is widely regarded as the master of British watercolours and a great influence on later French impressionists like Monet.

He spent a year touring Wales from 1798-1799 making topographical sketches of people and places for later larger paintings.

The auction, which is dedicated to the best of Welsh art and Welsh antiques, has more than 500 lots.

Heralded as one of the “most important” auctions in terms of Welsh heritage and Welsh fine art, the company running the auction is expecting to raise upwards of £300,000.

“We have been holding The Welsh Sale for many years, but this is certainly one of the largest and most important,” said Ben.

He added: “We expect the sale to raise between £300,000 and £400,000.

“Looking around at the sale it makes me very proud to be Welsh: Welsh art and artifacts produced in Wales are in high demand and there are people all over the world who will pay very good money for certain things.”

Other items that will feature in the auction include three oil paintings by Sir Kyffin Williams, widely regarded as one of Wales’ most distinguished artists, which together are expected to make up to £50,000.

Sir Kyffin was born 100 years ago in May – and with the centenary coming up, the auctioneers believe that there may well be extra interest in his paintings this year.

Also up for grabs is a collection of Dylan Thomas letters, books and material collected by the Welsh theatre director Michael Bogdanov, who died last year.

Among these items are extremely rare Swansea Grammar School magazines from the 1920s which Dylan Thomas edited and where he published his first poems.

There are also valuable artworks by famous Welsh painters John Piper, John Knapp Fisher, Augustus John and Gwilym Prichard.

For more information about the auction, which takes place on March 24 at Rogers Jones & Co in Cardiff, visit rogerjones.co.uk