A JMW Turner watercolour from his later years is expected to fetch more than £600,000 when it goes under the hammer next month. The painting, titled Sunrise Over The Sea, features bold colours of yellow, orange and blue to capture changing sunlight over what is thought to be Margate seaside.
It will be sold at Christie’s auction house on July 4 as part of their Old Master and British Drawings and Watercolours sale, with an estimated price tag of £600,000 to £800,000. The artwork is believed to have been created by the British artist in the final years of his celebrated career before he died in 1851 aged 76.
Turner’s earliest connection with Margate dates back to the 1780s when he was a teenager, but from the early 1830s he revisited the Kent seaside regularly while researching scenes for artwork. The Turner Contemporary gallery now sits on the site of the boarding house where he stayed. The painting was previously owned by Turner’s Margate landlady, Sophia Caroline Booth, and later acquired by art collector Walter Brandt.
Harriet Drummond, international head of British drawings and watercolours at Christie’s, said: “This remarkably well-preserved and ravishingly beautiful drawing is an exceptional example of the boldly expressive watercolours Turner made in his final years.” She noted that it has now been associated with sheets from one of the ‘roll’ sketchbooks that were broken up after Turner’s death, and can be placed in the sequence used during the summer of 1845.
The painting will be on public view at Christie’s New York from June 10 to 14, then at the Classic Week pre-sale exhibition in London from July 1 to 4.
