Turner's 'Rome, from Mount Aventine' Expected to Fetch £50m at Sotheby's After Rome Preview

Key facts

• J.M.W. Turner's Rome, from Mount Aventine (1836) is on view at the Palazzo Rondinini in Rome for three days.
• The painting is expected to fetch around £50m at Sotheby's London on 9 December, which would beat Turner's auction record.
• The same work set Turner's previous auction record in 2014, selling for £30.3 million including fees at Sotheby's London.
• It was painted for Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar and bought in 1878 by Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, as a wedding gift for his marriage to Hannah de Rothschild.
• The canvas has changed hands only once since 1878 and has never been restored, remaining on its original canvas and in its original frame.
• Sotheby's specialist Julian Gascoigne says no Turner of its calibre has come to auction in the twelve years since its last sale.
• The Rome exhibition is the most valuable work ever shown by an auction house in Italy, according to Sotheby's.
• After Rome, the painting will be shown at Sotheby's galleries in London, Hong Kong and New York before returning to London for the 9 December sale.