Carson does Constable

November 13 2015

Video: Sotheby's

Though I might have wondered recently why auction houses don't do enough to market 'lesser' Old Masters, there's no doubting their ability to advertise the expensive stuff. In the above video, actor Jim Carter (most recently, Carson in Downton Abbey) narrates a celeverly put together selection of Constable's writings. The video gently makes the point that The Lock coming up at Sotheby's in December (£8m-£12m) was one of the artist's best and favourite paintings.

In my experience, selling Old Masters is about telling the right story in the right way, and here Sotheby's have done it exceptionally well.

Notice to "Internet Explorer" Users

You are seeing this notice because you are using Internet Explorer 6.0 (or older version). IE6 is now a deprecated browser which this website no longer supports. To view the Art History News website, you can easily do so by downloading one of the following, freely available browsers:

Once you have upgraded your browser, you can return to this page using the new application, whereupon this notice will have been replaced by the full website and its content.