This Forgotten Sculpture Was Used as a Doorstop in a Scotland Shed. It Turned Out to Be a Masterpiece Worth Millions

Around 1930, a Scottish town council bought a marble bust for £5. Though the 18th-century artwork was created by the celebrated French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon, its importance was forgotten: In 1998, the bust was being used as a doorstop inside a shed.

Now, the piece, known as the Bouchardon Bust, could sell for £2.5 million (nearly $3.2 million). After years of bureaucratic debate, local officials are hoping to sell it to a private buyer. The proceeds would go to Invergordon, the small town in northern Scotland that purchased it.

Bouchardon is considered a forerunner of Neoclassicism, the late 18th-century style inspired by ancient Greek and Roman art. He worked as an artist in the court of the French king Louis XV, and his best-known works include the Fountain of the Four Seasons (1745) and Cupid Cutting His Bow From the Club of Hercules (1750).

But several decades earlier, Bouchardon created a bust of John Gordon, an 18th-century local landowner who “was believed to be the founder of the town of Invergordon,” according to a statement from the Highland Council, of the region that includes Invergordon.

Gordon came from a family of Scottish landowners, and he was traveling Europe as a young man when he met Bouchardon in Rome, where the artist created the marble sculpture in 1728, per BBC News’ Steven McKenzie. The bust remained at the Gordon family’s Invergordon Castle for many years.

Around 1930, the Invergordon Town Council purchased the bust at an auction. Officials hoped to display it at the town hall. But in the decades that followed, it appears to have been misplaced.

Maxine Smith was an Invergordon councilor in the late ’90s when she first saw the Bouchardon Bust while searching for old provost robes and chains in a storage shed. She noticed the white artwork holding open an interior door, but she focused on the ceremonial robes and paintings sitting nearby.

“The pictures looked quite expensive, and I ignored this thing on the floor,” she told BBC News’ McKenzie and Iain MacInnes last year. “A few people have joked, ‘You should have taken it home when you saw it.’”

Fortunately, someone else recognized the bust’s value soon after. Since the artwork’s rediscovery, it’s been held by the Highland Council. Local officials have opted against displaying it themselves due to its value, though they loaned it to the Louvre in Paris in 2016 and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2017.

The bust recently attracted the attention of a mystery buyer, who enlisted the auction house Sotheby’s to relay their offer. The unidentified individual also offered to commission a museum-quality replica of the bust to be displayed in Invergordon.

The sale has been the subject of drawn-out debates, making progress difficult. A committee with the Highland Council voted to sell the bust earlier this year. According to CNN’s Amarachi Orie, the Scottish Highlands’ Tain Sheriff Court approved the sale last week.

As councilor Lyndsey Johnston says in the statement, the proceeds will be an investment in Invergordon. “The community and visitors will be able to enjoy the replica bust and the history behind the original for years to come,” she adds.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.