It's a fair cop – John Constable makes Shropshire family £8m
It was bought by a family in Shropshire for £860 – and last night it sold for £8 million.
Renowned British landscape artist John Constable's painting The Lock was the main attraction at Sotheby's fine art auction.
It was given a guide price of between £8 million and £12 million before the sale, but failed to capture the imagination of bidders and sold at the lower end of its estimate.
The painting was sold by the Foster family, who own the Apley estate near Shifnal.
It had been in the family for 160 years, when the £860 price tag was considered a small fortune.
The artwork then went on display at Apley Hall for 100 years, before it was removed in 1960 just before the house was converted into a school.
Since then the painting has only been seen in public a couple of times in exhibitions.
Two versions of The Lock were painted by Constable – the original version and the later version that was sold last night.
The second version is said to be more faithful to the scene as the artist had more time to work on it. He recreated it faithfully with "small but important" changes such as more dramatic rain clouds. He liked the painting so much that he kept it until his death in 1837.
The Lock depicts a scene on the River Stour in Suffolk. It is the landscape of Constable's childhood, the area that first fired his imagination and desire to be a painter.
The original painting, painted in 1824, is one of a small group of huge landscapes known as Constable's 'Six Footers', which for many define the peak of the artist's career. It was sold for £22.4 million in 2012.
