AMMONNEWS – An 18th-century bust bought by a Scottish city council for £5 ($6) nearly 100 years ago may sell for more than £2.5 million ($3 million).
The famous French artist Edemé Bouchardon sculpted the bust of landowner and legislator John Gordon.
A report issued by the Invergordon City Council stated that member politicians are considering whether to sell this piece, which Soby’s Auction House described as “exquisitely executed.”
The report explained that an individual had already submitted a request to Sozby’s Auction House offering to buy the statue, adding that Sozby’s experts believe that its value has reached its peak.
A statement indicated that council members will decide the future of the bust on Monday, and funds from the sale could then be used to “reactivate” the Invergordon Fund for the public good and “the benefit of the community,” although full consultation with the community will precede any process. sale.
The bust was displayed for the first time in the City Hall, and was initially appreciated not for the sculptor’s talent, but for its depiction of Gordon, said to be the founder of Invergordon, a small Scottish coastal town about 300 kilometers (180 miles) north, from the capital, Edinburgh.
Bouchardon used a method in sculpting the bust in 1728, which became widespread many years later, when he was residing in the Italian capital, Rome, and Gordon passed by it during his grand tour, a European tour undertaken by aristocrats, most of them English, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was like a rite of passage.
Among his other accomplishments, Bouchardon was the sculptor of Louis
There are few publicly available details about the bust’s whereabouts since the council purchased it.
According to a local council member, the bust was found in an industrial area in 1998. Maxine Smith told The Scotsman newspaper in 2016 that she found the bust 25 years ago when it was used to stop a door from opening, while searching for old dresses.
She continued: “I was able to get the key from the council. I found the dresses and there was a bust supporting the door so it would stay open.”
She added, “The insurance team intervened and we found that its financial value was very large, estimated at about 200 thousand pounds sterling at the time.”
The council said that once the bust was rediscovered and identified, it was displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
However, since its return to Scotland, it has been placed in storage at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery due to concerns about the security risks of displaying it.
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