The Apocalyptic Painting That Set Glenn Brown's Auction Record
3 min read · 28 Jul 2025
The Tragic Conversion Of Salvador Dalí (After John Martin). Image courtesy of Sotheby's
Glenn Brown's The Tragic Conversion Of Salvador Dalí (After John Martin) (1998) sold for $8.12m (£5.19m) at Sotheby's in London on June 26, 2012. The oil on canvas had been traded once before.
Glenn Brown's monumental canvas, which appropriates the Victorian artist John Martin's apocalyptical painting, The Great Day of His Wrath, was first shown when Brown was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 2000. A decade later Brown and Martin's paintings were shown again at Tate Britain, this time alongside each other.
Brown has said the tragedy of Salvador Dali was the Surrealist artist's conversion to Catholicism, "which marked the end of his great works, and the transition to his more kitsch hyper-realist stage".
Melding the two references, and painting in the style of an Old Master, resulted in Brown's tour de force. The epic canvas has not been displayed in public since its record-breaking sale.
A painter of paintings, Brown has said: "As far as I'm concerned I'm painting things from real life... these paintings that I use do already exist and they are part of my life, my education and my way of understanding the world through art."
Filth. Image courtesy of Phillips de Pury & Company
The sale beat the artist’s previous auction record by $5.57m, a 200% rise. His previous record was set by Filth (2004), which sold for $2.55m at Phillips de Pury & Company on May 12, 2011.
A Brief History of Glenn Brown at Auction
Sale Date | Title | Price | Record Increase | Venue | City |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2012-06-26 | The Tragic Conversion Of Salvador Dalí (After John Martin) | $8.12m | 219 % | Sotheby's | London |
2011-05-12 | Filth | $2.55m | 18 % | Phillips de Pury & Company | New York |
2010-06-30 | Dalí-Christ (after Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War 1936 by Salvador Dalí) By kind permission of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation Spain | $2.15m | 157 % | Christie's | London |
2007-06-21 | The Rebel | $836,700 | 35 % | Sotheby's | London |
2007-05-15 | Marquess of Breadlabane | $620,000 | 3 % | Sotheby's | New York |
2006-11-14 | Bertrand Russell at the BBC | $600,000 | 24 % | Sotheby's | New York |
2006-10-15 | Disco | $482,300 | 39 % | Christie's | London |
2005-06-22 | Pornography of Death | $346,100 | 9 % | Sotheby's | London |
2005-02-10 | Beautification | $318,000 | 703 % | Sotheby's | London |
2002-02-06 | Ornamental Despair (Painting For Ian Curtis) Copied From ‘The Stars Like Dust’ 1986 By Chris Foss | $39,600 | 37 % | Christie's | London |
2001-02-09 | Exercise One (for Ian Curtis) (after "Icebergs in Space" 1989 by Chris Foss) | $29,000 | 1 % | Christie's | London |
2000-06-28 | You take my place in this showdown | $28,700 | - | Christie's | London |
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