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Portrait which sold for £80,000 could sell for £3.5m three years later, after restoration revealed it was a Rubens

Rubens' Portrait Of A Lady, which was until recently hidden away in a private collection, unknown for much of the 20th century. - Victoria Jones / PA 
Rubens' Portrait Of A Lady, which was until recently hidden away in a private collection, unknown for much of the 20th century. - Victoria Jones / PA

A portrait which sold for £80,000 three years ago is set to sell for more than 40 times that amount, after the removal of almost 140 years of dirt revealed it was a Rubens.

The Portrait Of A Lady, by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, was revealed when layers of dirt and varnish were removed.

It will be offered for auction at Sotheby's on July 28, the first major evening sale in London since lockdown, with a £2.5 million to £3.5 million estimate.

The 17th century masterpiece was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1902 as a work by Rubens, but Andrew Fletcher, Sotheby's head of department for Old Master paintings, said its origins had been "forgotten about".

Its former owner is believed to be a descendant of Charles Butler, who had bought it at the great auction of Hugh Munro of Novar in 1878.

After remaining in the Butler family collection for 139 years, it was sold for £78,000 in 2017 by Tennants Auctioneers, Leyburn.

It was catalogued during the sale as being from the workshop of Rubens, meaning it was thought to have been painted by one of his assistants.

The painting will be offered with an estimate of £2-3million in the Sotheby's cross-category sale on 28th July. - PA 
The painting will be offered with an estimate of £2-3million in the Sotheby's cross-category sale on 28th July. - PA

But the anonymous buyer - who is now selling the work - had a hunch it was the real thing and undertook a lengthy cleaning process to reveal the painting's true quality.

The buyer then took it to Sotheby’s experts who confirmed it was a Rubens. "It's one of those moments that you have a couple of times a year when you walk in, and you just have this wonderful instant reaction of glee," Mr Fletcher said.

Some "hidden details" in the painting were brought out with an infrared camera, he added, including changes Rubens made while painting.

"There is one enormous change in the sky where the red curtain descended... Rubens obviously wasn't happy with that so pushed it back up and included more sky,” he said.

He added the portrait, which depicts a young woman in a black dress and cloak, is "very majestic".

"She's got such a wonderful presence. I love the way she's looking out slightly out of the corner of her eye with a little bit of a grin,” he said.

"There's a real sense of character to her face even though she's actually posed in quite a formal way."