Shropshire estate owners' £12 million painting up for sale

A special version of The Lock, which the artist produced for himself, will go on sale in December after 160 years in the ownership of the Foster family.

For nearly 100 years, the painting was on display at Apley Hall in Norton, near Shifnal, before it was removed in 1960 shortly before the house was converted into a school.

The original version of The Lock, which depicts a scene on the River Stour in Suffolk, propelled the artist to worldwide fame after a landmark exhibition at the Royal Academy helped cement his place as one of Britain's favourite painters.

That painting was controversially sold for £22.4 million in 2012 when it was taken off the walls of a public gallery and placed into private hands.

However, the artist also produced a second version for himself, which he kept until his death in 1837.

He is said to have painted his second version with the luxury of more time, recreating it faithfully with "small but important" changes such as more dramatic rain clouds.

This second painting will now be put up for auction by Sotheby's on December 9, with a guide price of between £8 million and £12 million.

However, Mitzi Mina of Sotheby's has suggested that this might be a conservative estimate.

"We would expect it's final price to fall between £8 million and £12 million, but other works by Constable have gone for considerably more than their estimate," she said.

"The other version of The Lock was sold for £22.4 million."

The reasons why the Foster family, which still owns Apley Estate, has chosen to sell the painting is not known.

"Everybody is different, and different people have different reasons for wanting to sell items such as this.

"It has been in the Foster family for 160 years, and although it has not been on display at Apley Hall since the 1960s, it has been exhibited a couple of time since, including an exhibition in Manchester.

Constable kept the second version of The Lock until his death in 1837, when it was sold alongside other masterpieces and was snapped up by leading collector Charles Birch for £131 10s, placing a higher monetary value on it than Salisbury Cathedral.

Years later, Birch is said to have fallen on hard times and the painting was sold for the second time, in 1855, to William Orme Foster, owner of Stourbridge's John Bradley & Co Ironworks.

Foster paid £860 for the painting, a record for any of Constable's works, and it has remained in his family ever since.

At the time, Foster – whose company was best known for building the Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive to run on a US railway – was living at Stourton Castle, near Stourbridge. But in 1867 he moved to Apley Hall, where the painting was on display for 93 years.

Since then, it has been on display at the Foster family's private home.

Experts

The Lock is one of a small group of landscapes known as the 'six footers', including the Hay Wain, which are thought by most experts to represent the pinnacle of the artist's career.

The painting will be sold at Sotheby's Old Master & British Paintings Sale at its auction house in New Bond Street, London, on December 9.