It is not a painting that screams it is a masterpiece by Salvador Dalí to the untrained eye.
So when the unusual picture went up for auction in a house clearance sale in Cambridge two years ago, it attracted just two bidders – and sold for £150.
Now, it has been valued at £20,000 to £30,000 after it was confirmed to be an illustration of an “old sultan” that Dalí painted in 1966.
Vecchio Sultano, a mixed media artwork made with watercolour paint and felt-tip, is an illustration of a scene from The Arabian Nights – one of 500 illustrations which the great surrealist artist intended to create of the Middle Eastern folktales.
“Dalí was quite obsessed with Moorish culture and believed himself to be from a Moorish line,” said Gabrielle Downie, a fine art specialist at Cheffins in Cambridge, which is selling the Dalí artwork on 23 October.
Dalí’s patrons, Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto, commissioned the illustrations and Rizzoli, an Italian publishing house, was planning to publish them.
But Dalí abandoned the project after completing just 100 of the 500 illustrations – leaving all of them unpublished.
“Of these 100 illustrations, half remained with the publishing house Rizzoli and were either damaged or lost, while the other 50 stayed with the Albarettos and were later inherited by their daughter, Christina – who was also Dalí’s goddaughter,” said Downie.
The 50 illustrations retained by the Albaretto family were finally published in 2014, reigniting interest in the abandoned project and raising intrigue over the whereabouts of the unpublished pieces.
However, Cambridge-based antiques dealer John Russell (not his real name), 60, was unaware of this two years ago when he snapped up Vecchio Sultano at a house clearance sale after spotting Dalí’s signature in the bottom right corner.
“The auction isn’t online, so you turn up, view, and whatever you see, [that] is your chance to discover a treasure,” he said. “Most of the time, I buy stuff that I like. On this occasion, I was really taking a bit of a punt, because I wasn’t sure I’d have it on the wall, to be honest … I do like some unusual art, but you’d have to love it, wouldn’t you?”
He was told the painting had been found in the garage of a London house and could barely contain his excitement when he saw stickers on the back, indicating it had been listed in a Sotheby’s auction in the 1990s. “I did a little bit of research and I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.”
He decided to bid for it “on the spur of the moment”, gambling on his ability to spot a fake after spending years avidly watching the BBC TV show Fake or Fortune. “It’s one of my favourite programmes.”
The painting, which depicts a bejewelled sultan, did not command widespread admiration: despite being described as an original painting by Dalí, the vendors “hadn’t even listed it with a reserve [price]”, he said, and “there was no interest in the room” from other dealers Russell knew. Just one person bid against him during the auction – and dropped out when Russell offered £150.
A few months later, via eBay in the US, he tracked down the relevant Sotheby’s sale catalogue which listed the 38cm x 29cm painting and demonstrated it had been previously identified as Dalí’s work and asked Cheffins to value it.
Cheffins then consulted the renowned Dalí expert Nicolas Descharnes, who certified the painting as authentic. He told the Guardian the style, subject and colours of the illustration matched those of other pieces in the series, along with the quality and size of the paper.
“People expect to see very surrealist pieces by Dalí. This one is not surrealist, but it’s a Dalí,” Descharnes said.