A work which sold at auction last year for just over £500 has now been attributed to JMW Turner, and will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on 2 July with an estimate of up to £300,000.
The work, The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol, was sold early last year at Dreweatts Donnington Priory, a regional UK auctioneer, for £524.80 including VAT. At this time it was attributed to a follower of the UK 18th-century artist Julius Caesar Ibbetson and entitled House by the Water in a Stormy Sky.
The painting—made in 1792 when Turner was 17—depicts a Bristol spa resort known as Hot Wells House; it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London shortly after the artist’s 18th birthday in 1793. The piece, which was first acquired by the Reverend Robert Nixon, was last exhibited in 1858 in Tasmania, Australia.
The work reemerged last year at the regional auction, where it was purchased by a collector who arranged for it to be restored. During conservation, Turner’s signature was discovered on the painting.
“We are as certain as it’s possible to be that this painting is by Turner,” Julian Gascoigne, a senior director at Sotheby’s, told The Guardian. He added that the painting had been examined by “all the leading Turner scholars alive today who unanimously endorsed the attribution”.
“It gives us a real insight into the ambition that Turner was clearly exhibiting at this early stage of his career, and shows a level of competency in oil painting, which is quite a technical medium,” Gascoigne says of the work, which Sotheby’s has issued with an estimate of £200,000 to £300,000.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Tate confirmed that the newly attributed work will be included in the forthcoming exhibition Turner and Constable at Tate Britain (27 November-12 April 2026). The Turner 250 festival this year celebrates the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth.
Dreweatts was contacted for further comment.