A Man Bought This Colorful Illustration of a Sultan for £150. It Turned Out to Be a Salvador Dalí Original That Could Sell for $40,000
An art dealer attending a house clearance sale spotted the Surrealist’s signature in the corner of the work, which depicts a scene from “One Thousand and One Nights”
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With only two bidders, an unusual watercolor and felt-tip illustration sold for £150 at a house clearance sale in England two years ago. The buyer, a Cambridge-based antiques dealer, had spotted a famous signature in the bottom corner of the artwork: that of Surrealist master Salvador Dalí.
“I did a little bit of research, and I couldn’t believe what I was looking at,” the unidentified man tells the Guardian’s Donna Ferguson. He placed a bid “on the spur of the moment,” confident that he’d stumbled onto a Dalí original. That hunch turned out to be correct, and now, the mixed-media painting is expected to sell at auction for up to $40,000.
Titled Vecchio Sultano, the work depicts a scene from One Thousand and One Nights. The beloved collection of Middle Eastern folktales was a great source of inspiration for the Spanish artist, who intended to create 500 illustrations based on the book. In the end, he abandoned the project after completing just 100.
“Dalí was fascinated with Moorish culture and believed himself to be from a Moorish line,” says Gabrielle Downie, a fine art specialist at Cheffins, the firm that plans to auction the Dalí painting this fall, in a statement.
Did you know? The origins of One Thousand and One Nights
No single author wrote the famed collection of stories. The tales were compiled by many creators working across the centuries, drawing on folklore from different cultures in Asia and the Middle East.Half of Dalí’s 100 illustrations went to the couple who commissioned them, Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto. They stayed in the family’s private collection until 2014, when they were published for the first time. The other half were never published and are believed to be either damaged or lost.
The Cambridge-based antiques dealer didn’t know any of this backstory when he attended the 2023 sale, but he correctly spotted Dalí’s signature on the work. The seller told him the painting had been found in the garage of a London house, the Guardian’s Donna Ferguson reports.
In addition to the signature, the art dealer spotted a sticker on the work’s back, indicating that it had been auctioned by Sotheby’s in the 1990s. After conducting some research, the man learned that the illustration had already been identified as an original Dalí when it was offered by Sotheby’s.
“The loss of an attribution is quite rare in the modern art world, making this a significant rediscovery for Dalí scholars,” says Downie in the statement.
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In preparation for the upcoming sale, Cheffins asked Dalí expert Nicolas Descharnes to authenticate the illustration. The work has a presale estimate of £20,000 to £30,000—roughly $26,000 to $40,000—and will be auctioned by Cheffins on October 23.
Painted in 1966, Vecchio Sultano depicts a sultan wearing a large, bejeweled turban. The illustration is not in Dalí’s signature Surrealist style, but it does boast a strange amalgamation of colors and organic shapes.
“Most of the time, I buy stuff that I like,” the anonymous art dealer, who frequents home auctions, tells the Guardian. “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?”
The illustration’s unusual appearance may have worked in the man’s favor at the clearance sale. The sole other bidder dropped out when he offered £150.
Such discoveries of works by famed artists are rare but not unheard of. In 2023, a dark painting of a biblical scene was found to be an original Rembrandt. Once valued at $15,000, the painting went on to fetch nearly $14 million at auction. Earlier this year, a family in France learned that a painting of lounging lions that was hanging in their living room was actually by Eugène Delacroix. It carried an auction estimate of $330,000.