'Lost' artworks shown before sale

This Turner hung at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, for 40 years Enlarge Image

Rediscovered works by artists including Turner and Goya are to go on show before being auctioned next week.

Sotheby's auction house in London will unveil £37m worth of famous paintings at its New Bond Street galleries.

Among them is a Turner, entitled Pope's Villa At Twickenham, which has not appeared on the open market since 1827.

It could fetch up to £7m and is being sold to help fund the development of Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where it has hung for 40 years.

'Exceptional landscape'

The artwork is expected to fetch up to £7m when it goes under the hammer on 9 July.

Emmeline Hallmark, head of British Paintings at Sotheby's, said Turner first exhibited Pope's Villa At Twickenham in 1808.

"This exceptional landscape painting of the River Thames has been used to illustrate the artist's revolutionary approach to landscape painting and it has delighted successive audiences," she said.

A work by Dutch painter Frans Hals, called Portrait Of Willem van Heythuysen and thought to date from around 1634-35, is expected to fetch up to £5m.

Christie's London auction house meanwhile is displaying three rediscovered drawings by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, before they are auctioned on Tuesday.

Presumed lost

Bajar Rinendo (Down They Come), The Constable Lampinos Stitched Inside A Dead Horse and Repentance, turned up recently in a Swiss private collection whose owners contacted Christie's.

Dating from the early 19th Century, they have been missing and presumed lost since 1877 and are expected to fetch more than £2m.

Christie's will also be displaying a painting called La Surprise by Jean-Antoine Watteau, previously missing for almost 200 years and presumed to have been destroyed.

Found in the corner of a drawing room in a British country house during a valuation last year, it is expected to be sold for up to £5m.