Crisis leads Thyssen to sell Constable's 'Lock'

Baroness Carmen Thyssen Bornemisza announced that, due to the crisis, one of British artist John Constable's most important paintings, "The Lock," will go under the hammer at Christie's in London.

"It's a pity that I have to sell it, I've delayed this step, but the crisis affects us all," she told reporters.

It will be held on July 3 and is expected to raise 20-25 million pounds (around $30-40 million), the auctioneer said on Tuesday.

The Lock is the last of the series still in private hands, and is being offered from the private collection of Thyssen Bornemisza.

The painting has been sold only once since it was acquired from the artist, raising 10.8 million pounds at auction in 1990 making it the most valuable British painting ever sold at the time -- a record it held for 16 years.

The Lock was completed in 1824, one of the most important years in Constable's career which saw The Hay Wain exhibited at the Paris Salon and King Charles X of France award him a gold medal.

Constable's success in France has been seen by many experts as a factor in inspiring French artists in a movement of landscape painting that would find its fullest expression some five decades later in the work of the Impressionists.

The Lock is a landscape depicting a man at a lock with a boat on the river just behind him, set under a towering tree and a dramatic, cloud-filled sky.