Washington auctioneer sells £1.5m Uruguayan painting

Toovey's sold a Uruguayan painting for £1.15 million on Wednesday, breaking the previous record for the artist's work.

Juan Manuel Blanes is said to be "Uruguay's most important painter", and he painted his Gaucho On A Horseback in the late 1800s.

It was sold to a Uruguayan collector on Wednesday, February 15.

The painting (Image: Google)

For the last 100 years, the artwork has been stored in a private collection - until the auction house in Washington, near Storrington, recently got its hands on the oil painting.

Bidding opened for the artwork at £80,000, and rapidly climbed up into the hundreds of thousands, before a short bidding war took the final value up to £1.15 million.

Juan was renowned for his historical paintings and portraits, capturing events that were pivotal in Uruguay's years of conflict after Spanish independence.

The canvas painting is dated circa 1879 to 1885, and was first owned by Spanish aristocat Baldomero Hyacinth de Bertodano.

He lived near Malmsbury in Wiltshire, where the painting hung until his death in 1921.

• Read more: Historic painting expected to fetch £120,000 when it goes under the hammer

After he died, the painting was auctioned along with other contents of the house, to divide the estate between his five family members.

His brother, Charles Edmund de Bertodano, bought the painting, which has remained in his family to this day.

Toovey's auction house (Image: Google)

Chairman of Toovey's, Rupert Toovey, said: "This is the first time that this important painting has appeared on the market in some 102 years.

"A hammer price of £1.15 million is a new world record and I am delighted that the painting has been acquired by a private Uruguayan collector.

"I have known the painting for many years, but congratulations must go to our fine art consultant Tim Williams whose exceptional research and tenacity in contacting collectors across the world has made this remarkable result possible, and Nick Toovey who conducted the auction."

Tim Williams (Image: Toovey's)

Tim added: "Blanes’ Gaucho paintings celebrate the way of life of these independent, rugged horsemen whose lives embodied the South American ‘Wild West’ and national identity in a similar way to the cowboys of the United States.

"The open prairie beneath an expansive sky would have contrasted with the pressured urban lives of the cosmopolitan collectors who patronised Blanes’ work.”