The Climax

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Two masterpieces lost for 80 years have been sold for £200,000 – after being found hanging in a pensioner's lavatory.

An auctioneer who had carried out a routine valuation at the man's bungalow home only found them when he asked to use the lavatory before he left.

He was stunned when he realised the pen-and-ink drawings above the sink were the work of the English artist Aubrey Beardsley.

The pair make up a highly valuable collection of 13 illustrations drawn for an Oscar Wilde play in 1894. The other 11 are accounted for.

The unnamed elderly man inherited them from his grandfather, a university professor and art-lover, 40 years ago. He did not appreciate what they were and hung them in his toilet. The drawings, The Climax and A Platonic Lament, were sold at auction. It is thought they were given to the vendor's grandfather as a gift in the 1930s.

Beardsley was a controversial Victorian artist renowned for producing erotic drawings, of which this series of illustrations was typical.

A Platonic Lament