London driver sells painting for £75,000 after £40 purchase
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A London taxi driver sold a painting for £75,000 in 2016 after buying it for £40 at a car boot sale approximately 30 years earlier.
The painting depicted the historic city of Amritsar, India, with the Golden Temple visible in the background. Art specialists at Roseberys auction house in London identified the work’s subject and linked it to 19th-century artistic traditions of the region, initially estimating its value at £500 to £1,000.
The painting, a large gouache miniature measuring 59 by 85 centimetres, showed a busy city scene and included a small self-portrait of the artist. Experts tentatively attributed the work to Baba Bishan Singh, an artist from a family who maintained murals at the Golden Temple, a holy site in Sikhism. Bishan Singh exhibited paintings in Lahore in 1864 that received commentary from Robert Baden-Powell, who praised the figure drawing but noted issues with perspective.
Following the auction, specialist Peter Greenway informed the taxi driver of the £75,000 sale, which occurred on April 15, 2016, and the driver decided to take the weekend off work after hearing the news. The sale demonstrated how overlooked art can gain recognition through expert evaluation and research, revealing a valuable record of Amritsar’s artistic history.
