Monarch of the Glen 'sister painting' could fetch £4m at auction

A little-known sister painting of Sir Edwin Landseer's Monarch of the Glen is expected to fetch up to £4m when it is auctioned in London next month.

Scene in Braemar features a 12-point stag on a Highland peak.

It was commissioned by the railway magnate Edward Ladd Betts for his home in Kent and has since passed through various private collections.

Its last appearance at auction was in 1994 when it was sold for £793,500.

Sotheby's estimates it will sell for between £3m and £4m when it goes under the hammer in July.

Julian Gascoigne, senior director in the paintings department, said the work was one of Landseer's great Highland masterpieces.

He described it as an atmospheric sister painting of the Monarch of the Glen, which hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland.

Gascoigne said: "Where the Monarch shows the stag in the brilliance of youth, this is a darker, more epic vision: majestic, charged with tension, and iconic in its vision of the Highlands.

"It is rarely seen in public and among the most spectacular Landseers still in private ownership - monumental in scale and a true masterpiece by one of the greatest animal painters."

Sir Edwin Landseer was Queen Victoria's favourite artist and regularly stayed at Mar Lodge, close to Balmoral.

Monarch of the Glen is his most famous work, and one of the most recognisable and reproduced paintings in British art.

It features on everything from whisky bottles to biscuit tins - and even appeared in the hit US show Schitt's Creek.

The painting had been on loan to the National Galleries for 17 years from the drinks company Diaego, who wanted to sell it.

In 2017, a public fundraising campaign was launched to buy it for £4m - half of what it was estimated to raise at auction.

While it is undoubtedly a showstopper, it is not without contradictions and there was criticism that it was not a representation of "real" Scotland.

But the success of the campaign meant there was also funding to take the painting around the country in a purpose-built touring art gallery.

This allowed as many people as possible to engage with the painting they had paid for.

Although lesser known, Scene in Braemar is much larger at almost 9ft (2.74m).

The industrialist Edward Betts was so delighted with the epic work in 1859 that he paid £800 - £200 above the fee Landseer had requested.

A banking crisis forced Betts to sell the work, along with the rest of his collection in 1868.

As a result, Scene in Braemar set a record when it sold for 4,000 guineas.

In 1857, The Times praised it as "masterly in conception and effect" and a worthy partner to Monarch of the Glen.