Unseen works by Dundee artist sell to top of more than £80,000

Previously unseen works by Dundee-born artist and sculptor William Turnbull have shattered auction expectations in a £300,000-plus online sale.

A top price of £81,250 was paid for one of more than 40 works from the estate of the Turnbull, who died in 2012 at the age of 90 and is set to be the subject of a major future exhibition in his home city.

The 44 pieces in the Sotheby’s sale drew global interest and reflected Turnbull’s career from the 1950-90s through paintings, lithographs, graphic art and sculpture.

A top price of £81,250 was bid for Blade Venus 1, from 1989, which was one of the artist’s cast-asides from an edition of six. The bronze, standing more than 3∫ft tall, had a pre-sale estimate of £60,000-£80,000.

His 1980 sculpture Venus was sold for £62,500 against an estimate of £30,000-£50,000. Several other pieces sold for well above expectations, among them an untitled crayon on paper piece depicting abstract figures which almost quadrupled its low estimate to fetch £23,750.

Despite remaining relatively unknown among the wider public in Dundee, Turnbull is regarded as a major British artist of the 20th Century.

His work is on display in the UK and abroad and venues including the Tate, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Chatsworth House have staged retrospectives.

He went to evening drawing classes at Dundee University and was an illustrator with DC Thomson before leaving the city as a 17-year-old to serve as a pilot in the RAF after the outbreak of the Second World War.