Turner’s ‘Rome, from Mount Aventine’ Heads to Auction with £50 Million Estimate

Sotheby’s has unveiled JMW Turner’s Rome, from Mount Aventine (1835) ahead of its Old Master Evening Sale in London on 9 December. Estimated in the region of £50 million, the painting is on public view at Rome’s Palazzo Rondinini from 29 September to 1 October—its first exhibition in the city it depicts.

Thought to have been started during Turner’s 1828–1829 stay in Rome and completed later in London, the painting opens a panorama over the Tiber from the Aventine, the southernmost of the city’s seven hills. An umbrella pine rises from the foreground, its broad crown filling much of the right half. Beyond it, the broken Ponte Emilio juts into the river, while St Peter’s Basilica and other domes recede into the distance. Some façades hold their shape beneath a pale blue sky, and others dissolve into yellow light above the water.

Turner had first visited Rome in 1819, when he was 44, filling his sketchbooks with views of the city. Five studies from his second visit a decade later informed this composition, though he drew them together rather than copying any single view. Shown at the Royal Academy in 1836, the work drew a mixed response: some critics praised its atmosphere, while others objected to its vivid yellows.

Turner painted the work for Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, a friend and patron who later became an executor of his estate. Munro wanted a view of modern Rome that took in the Tiber and its ancient monuments. At the 1878 sale of his collection, Archibald Primrose, Fifth Earl of Rosebery and later British prime minister, bought the painting for 5,850 guineas—the highest price paid for a painting in the sale. He and his wife, Hannah Rothschild, had interrupted their honeymoon to see the pictures beforehand.

Major late oils by Turner rarely come to market. This one remained with the Rosebery family until 2014, its original, unlined canvas untouched, Turner’s fingerprints still visible near its edges. It fetched £30.3 million at Sotheby’s that year, setting Turner’s auction record. That record still stands, and this painting has a chance to break it when it returns to auction in December.

After Rome, it will be shown in London, Hong Kong and New York City prior to the December sale.