British collector Henry Vaughan purchased John Constable's famous painting "The Hay Wain" at auction at Christie's in London for £1,365. The previous record sale price for a painting in the United Kingdom had been for another Constable, "The Lock," for £865 ten years earlier. This 1866 auction also featured J.M.W.Turner's "Seventh Plague of Egypt," and Edwin Landseer's "Taming of the Shrew." Vaughan later gave "The Hay Wain" to the National Gallery in London, where it now has been voted the second most popular painting in any British gallery. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
"Fine Arts," The American Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1866 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873), 317.