£35 Cadell work fetches £300k at auction

AN oil painting by Edinburgh artist Francis Cadell fetched nearly 10,000 times its original price at an auction in London.

The picture, titled The Red Fan, was painted by Cadell in 1924 and originally sold for £35 in 1930.

When auctioned at Sotheby’s in London earlier this week, it sold for £301,250, making it the fourth most valuable Cadell ever to be sold at an auction.

Before the auction, Sotheby’s accurately forecast the painting could sell for between £250,000 and £350,000.

Despite his posthumous wealth, Cadell left a little over £800 when he died of cancer in “considerable financial and physical distress” in Edinburgh in 1937.

A Sotheby’s spokesman said: “The painting was likely completed in 1924 when Cadell lived at 6 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, a fashionable residence that the artist filled with fine china, silver and Japanese fans. These objects were often the subjects for Cadell’s paintings and it is likely that the red fan and wine glass in the painting were the artist’s possessions.

“The Red Fan is a sophisticated painting that is representative of Cadell’s mature still life style of the 1920s.”

Cadell was born in Edinburgh in 1883, educated at Edinburgh Academy and studied in Paris, before returning to the Capital in 1903, where he created most of his best-known works.