A painting newly revealed to be by J. M. W. Turner has surfaced in a private Austrian collection and is now up for sale at a Viennese gallery for €38 million ($41 million).
A version of Venice, Seen from the Canale della Giudecca, an 1840 painting housed at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the piece was confirmed as an authentic Turner after extensive analysis by European researchers as part of an independent study published earlier this year.
Vienna’s Artziwna gallery oversaw the analysis. In October 2024, historians from the Belvedere Museum and the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts confirmed the painting’s origins.
Painted in 1845, the work is believed to have been in Austria since the 1950s. Its current owner, whose name was not disclosed as part of the study, purchased it in 2005. The unnamed collector loaned the piece in 2022, then commissioned the study after suspecting it may be an original Turner.
In the study published by Artziwna, researchers said that they believe their findings confirm Turner is the work’s creator. But they also wrote that they weren’t successful in attracting other international experts to peer-review their findings.
“We were unable to win other established Turner experts for our research,” the gallery’s director, George Ziwna, said in a foreword included in the publication. All inquiries to the Tate museum network in London to discuss the work went unanswered, he said.
Turner’s paintings have for years commanded record prices in public sale. His auction record was set by Rome (from Mount Aventine), which sold for £30.3 million ($47.6 million) at Sotheby’s in 2014.
