A $66 Million Estimate for Turner's Rome, With Its Own $47.5 Million Record to Beat

A Turner view of Rome that once sold for $47.5 million, a record at the time, is going up for auction again, now carrying a $66 million estimate. That price is its own earlier result, and the painting has to beat it. More than ten years have passed since that sale. The new estimate is $18.5 million higher than the old one, an increase of close to 40 percent. The subject is Rome, painted in a soft, misty light where the city's outlines blur into the air around them. A collector in New York, Palm Beach or Los Angeles should look past the headline number to what the gap between the two figures says: after more than a decade, the people pricing this canvas think the market for it has grown substantially. It is unusual to see one painting measured against its own history like this, and the sale will show whether bidders agree.

With reporting from Artnet News.