(Bloomberg News) A John Constable painting owned by the widow of the Dutch-born industrialist and Old Master collector Baron Hans Thyssen-Bornemisza sold Tuesday at a sale in London for 22.4 million pounds ($35 million) with fees, a record for the artist at auction.

Constable's 1824 landscape "The Lock" had been consigned for sale at Christie's International by Baroness Carmen 'Tita' Thyssen-Bornemisza, a former Miss Spain, who became the baron's fifth wife in 1985.

Christie's and Sotheby's are testing the market for Old Master paintings this week with U.K. evening auctions estimated to raise as much as 129 million pounds. Pre-20th century European paintings have traditionally been the most expensive of all works of art at auction. Recently, some Old Masters have struggled to attract new buyers and have fallen in value in comparison with postwar and contemporary works.

Christie's guaranteed a minimum price for the Constable, which was estimated at 20 million pounds to 25 million pounds, based on hammer prices. It was bought by the third-party guarantor and there were no other bids.

The Constable was acquired by Baron Thyssen at Sotheby's in 1990 for 10.8 million pounds, then a record for any British painting sold at auction. It had been displayed in the museum in Madrid that houses the Baron's collection since 1992.

Norman Rosenthal, the former exhibitions director of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, resigned as a trustee of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza last week in protest at the sale of the painting, the U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper said on June 30.

Baron Thyssen was the heir to a fortune built from his Austro-Hungarian family's business interests that included steel, armaments and naval construction. The Baron acquired more than 1,600 Old Master and modern paintings during his life as a collector. He died in Spain in April 2002 at the age of 81.

"The Lock," showing a figure struggling to open a canal gate, was one of six large-scale canvases of the River Stour that Constable exhibited to acclaim at the London Royal Academy between 1819 and 1825.

Earlier Tuesday, Rembrandt's "Man in a Gorget and Cap" was sold to a single bid from an Asian telephone buyer for 8.4 million pounds with fees. It had a lower estimate of 8 million pounds. The work was one of 15 Old Masters offered by the collectors Pieter and Olga Dreesmann, regular buyers at the Frieze Art Fair. The Dreesmanns are "re-focusing" their interests, according to the London-based auction house.

Visiting collectors are also being drawn to Master Drawings and Master Paintings promotions running concurrently at 40 commercial galleries through tomorrow.

Dealers are offering an estimated 100 million pounds of works. Stephen Ongpin is asking 190,000 pounds for Alberto Giacometti's 1954 pencil drawing of the writer James Lord. Colnaghi has priced a 1768 George Stubbs painting of an unidentified man with a horse in river landscape at 1 million euros ($1.26 million).

Masterpiece Sale

Elsewhere, a Rodin bronze of "The Kiss" has been snapped up at the Masterpiece London fair as dealers and auction houses offer more than $313 million of works in the final week of summer art sales in the U.K. capital.

Now in its third year, Masterpiece is billed as the U.K. capital's equivalent of the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, with the addition of luxury brands such as Rolls- Royce cars, Ruinart champagne and Vacheron Constantin watches. Catering is by the Caprice Group.

More than 160 dealers are exhibiting in a 100,000-square- foot (9,290 square meters) temporary structure on the Chelsea Embankment. Sheikh Saud al Thani of Qatar and Charles Saatchi were among 5,175 VIP visitors at the June 27 preview of the weeklong fair.

"It looked beautiful," Morgan Long, director of art investment at the London-based Fine Art Fund, said in an interview. "It's still a bit more glitz than substance, though. I'd seen quite a lot of the paintings before. The fair isn't yet drawing international people in the way that Maastricht does."

London-based Sladmore Gallery sold a bronze of "The Kiss," cast during Rodin's lifetime, to a Swiss collector for $2 million. A Middle East client bought a pair of diamond and emerald earrings by the bespoke Parisian jeweler JAR from Symbolic & Chase of Bond Street for $500,000.

A hand-signed 1895 lithograph of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" -- one of just 26 made -- is being offered by the Oslo- based dealer Kaare Berntsen, priced at 1.7 million pounds ($2.7 million). The fair runs through tomorrow.

Pace Space

Pace Gallery is the latest New York contemporary-art dealership to announce that it's opening a space in London to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair in October.

Pace has commissioned the U.K. architect David Chipperfield to renovate a 9,000-square-foot gallery in the west wing of 6 Burlington Gardens, part of the Royal Academy of Arts. The space was previously occupied by Christie's dealership, Haunch of Venison.

Art Crossroads

"We are delighted to take residence in 6 Burlington Gardens, in the heart of Mayfair and at the crossroads of the international art world," the dealership's president Marc Glimcher said in an emailed statement.

Pace joins fellow New York dealers Per Skarstedt, Michael Werner and David Zwirner scheduling to open spaces in Mayfair during "Frieze Week."

U.S. galleries have been attracted by the growing number of wealthy people from outside the U.K. buying London properties as a hedge against economic and political instability.

Pace already has a space in London in Lexington Street, Soho, which opened in October 2011, as well as four galleries in Manhattan and one in Beijing.

The dealership's Royal Academy branch will be inaugurated with the show, "Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes," opening on Oct. 4 through Nov. 16.