Forgotten Edward Bird painting up for sale for £125,000

A forgotten 200-year-old masterpiece painted by one of Wolverhampton's most important artists is back in Britain after being returned from Australia - and is now up for sale at £125,000.

The County Auction is an oil painting by Wolverhampton-born Edward Bird dating back to 1812. It was presented in the same year to the prestigious Royal Academy in London.

More recently it was owned by the National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne, Australia, but it is now being sold by London West End art dealer Richard Green.

The recently rediscovered picture is rated as one of Bird's cleverest pictures.

Wolverhampton Art Gallery owns the preparatory oil sketch which Bird produced before he started the painting.

The gallery also owns 19 oil paintings and eight drawings by Bird,who was born at Cat Yard, Berry Street, in 1772.

After attending the Free Grammar School,in Wolverhampton, Bird was apprenticed, at the age of 13, as a japanning artist to the firm of Jones and Taylor at the Old Hall Works in Wolverhampton.

He spent the first half of his life in Wolverhampton before moving to Bristol in or around 1794.

Bird's importance as an artist was officially confirmed on February 10,1815, just three years after he produced The Country Auction when he was elected to the Royal Academy.

This entitled him to place the letters RA after his name.

Since the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, there have been only around 600 Royal Academicians.

Bird died aged 47 in 1819.