AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Were you to consult the National Gallery in London, you would learn that J. M. W. Turner - known as William Turner - is, quote, "perhaps the best-loved English romantic artist." He is something of a national icon, so a discovery of a Turner painting is, well, huge news in the British art world.
JULIAN GASCOIGNE: Generally speaking, when someone comes in and says, I think I might have a Turner, one's sort of immediate reaction is to be a little bit skeptical on the basis that, you know, it sort of sounds too good to be true.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Julian Gascoigne is senior director at Sotheby's in London, and Sotheby's has announced the auction of a painting that was forgotten in a private collection for more than 150 years, then restored.
GASCOIGNE: In that process, when they were taking off these layers of old varnish, the restorer found a signature which says W. Turner.
CHANG: It's called The Rising Squall, and it was Turner's first oil painting to be exhibited. He was a teenager, still working out his own style.
GASCOIGNE: I mean, he's a 17-year-old artist when he paints this picture, so it's very much sort of indebted to the classical traditions and sort of other artists working at this time.
KELLY: We asked Julian Gascoigne to paint us a picture of the painted picture. He told us it's a dramatic scene - a cluster of buildings and fishing boats on a rocky coastline with a stormy sky approaching.
GASCOIGNE: And a sort of glimmer of light coming through the middle of the sky, which illuminates the whole scene.
KELLY: Much later, William Turner would become known for his use of light in landscapes and seascapes that verged on the impressionistic, even avant-garde.
CHANG: The Rising Squall is an early Turner, but here's the real head-turner. When it first changed hands recently, it sold for the equivalent of $506 U.S. When it's going to be auctioned on July 2, Sotheby's thinks it could go for around 3- to $400,000 U.S.
KELLY: Which, Ailsa, based on other recent Turner discoveries, that might turn out to be a conservative estimate.
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