Image Credentials: Image Title: Rare Salvador Dalí Artwork Mistakenly Bought for €175 Now Valued at Over €35,000 Source: (sora.chatgpt) Date: July 2025 Attribution: Created by AI-generated imagery (sora.chatgpt), it does not depict a real-world scene.
By Open Chronicle Staff with Agencies
A rare original illustration by Spanish surrealist master Salvador Dalí, mistakenly purchased for only €175 at a house clearance auction in Cambridge, has now been authenticated and valued between €23,500 and €35,000. The piece, titled Vecchio Sultano, was created in 1966 using watercolor and felt-tip pen and portrays an aged sultan in Dalí’s unmistakable hand.
The artwork was acquired by a 60-year-old antiques dealer, identified under the pseudonym John Russell, who found it stored in a garage of a London home. The seller, unaware of the artwork’s true value, listed it with no minimum bid. Only one other bidder expressed interest before dropping out at €175, allowing Russell to win the piece.
Vecchio Sultano is part of a little-known and ultimately abandoned Dalí project to illustrate the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). Dalí initially planned to produce 500 illustrations for the book project commissioned by his patrons, Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto, for the Italian publisher Rizzoli. He completed only around 100 before the project was shelved. Many of these illustrations were either lost or damaged, and those that survived were inherited by Christina Albaretto, the couple’s daughter and the artist’s goddaughter.
Further evidence of the work’s provenance came from labels affixed to the back of the frame, suggesting the piece had once been sold at a Sotheby’s auction in the 1990s. Through additional research, Russell located a copy of the Sotheby’s auction catalog via eBay and submitted the work to Cheffins, the auction house overseeing the upcoming sale.
Cheffins enlisted the expertise of Nicolas Descharnes, a leading authority on Dalí and son of the artist’s longtime secretary and archivist Robert Descharnes. Following close analysis, Descharnes authenticated the work, stating, “The colors, the style, and the paper are consistent with others from the series. It’s not surrealist, but it’s unquestionably a Dalí.”
The rediscovered artwork is scheduled to go under the hammer on October 23 at Cheffins in Cambridge. With its estimated value now reaching over 200 times the purchase price, the auction could deliver a staggering return on investment for its accidental buyer, and a new chapter in the legacy of one of modern art’s most enigmatic figures.
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