Storm over the Château d'If
From the Whatifs Catalogue, the encyclopedia of paintings that never were. Lot of the day on Oct 21.
Created with AI, after J. M. W. Turner, public domain.
Storm over the Château d'If is an imagined painting attributed, within the Whatifs fiction, to J. M. W. Turner (1838). It belongs to the Whatifs series of works the great masters never painted.
History and rediscovery
Turner read The Count of Monte Cristo as it came out. An 1838 sketchbook shows the Château d'If under a storm. The matching canvas, sold to a Marseille shipowner, was found in 2025 in an office at La Joliette, mistaken for an anonymous seascape.
Sale
Within the fiction, the painting sold for £42,000,000 (2025). Tap the board above to replay the imagined bidding. The auction pictured below never took place.
A new Whatif every week
One painting that never was, with its story, in your inbox. Free, one click to leave.
Your email is only used for this. One-click unsubscribe.
You are in. The next Whatif lands in your inbox.
See also
- A Sunday Evening on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat
- The Wave, the Morning After, Katsushika Hokusai
- Las Meninas, Seen from the Mirror, Diego Velázquez
Notes
- Image generated with AI from a prompt written by Whatifs. No real painting, signature or auction house is reproduced.
- Story written for Whatifs. Any resemblance to real discoveries is coincidental.
