LONDON, June 29 (Reuters) – A portrait of the Duke of Wellington after he defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 will go under the hammer on Tuesday at Christie’s Classic Week in London, where it could fetch up to $16 million.
“The Duke of Wellington” by Thomas Lawrence, one of eight portraits the artist painted of the military and political leader, is understated compared with more heroic depictions of him.
“This painting is altogether different in tone, showing a half-length format,” Clementine Sinclair, who heads the Old Masters paintings department at Christie’s in London, said.
“It is thought to have either been commissioned by the Duke himself and gifted to (friends) Harriet and Charles Arbuthnot… or indeed by the Arbuthnots themselves. But either way, the format speaks to a very personal commission.”
With an estimate of £8 million to £12 million ($10.59 million to $15.89 million), the painting will lead Christie’s Old Masters Evening Sale on the first day of Christie’s June 30 to July 8 Classic Week of auctions, a series of live sales.
Other works on sale include Bernardo Bellotto’s view of Venice “The Bacino di San Marco from the Canale della Giudecca” and works by Dutch still life painter Jan van Huysum.
Also on Tuesday, Christie’s will hold its Exceptional Sale: Masterworks across Cultures auction, presenting a first edition of “Wuthering Heights” in the original cloth binding and bearing author Emily Bronte’s pen name Ellis Bell, estimated at £400,000 to £600,000.
A potentially even bigger highlight is the skull of an Ice Age sabre-toothed tiger with a price estimate of £1 million to £1.5 million as the fascination with extinct species endures.
“Everyone knows what a sabre-toothed tiger is,” James Hislop, head of the science and natural history department at Christie’s in London, said. “Those teeth are bigger than any of the other sabre cats that existed.”
($1 = 0.7553 pounds)
(Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; editing by Barbara Lewis)
