When Scotland’s Highlands Council bought an elegant 18th-century marble bust for just £5, or around £500 ($650) in today’s money, it didn’t realize the sale was a steal. The work by Edmé Bouchardon, celebrated sculptor to French King Louis XV, was lost for decades until it was recently rediscovered propping open a shed door. Now, the local council has been given the go-ahead to sell the treasure for a staggering £2.5 million ($3 million), which will be used to fund public programs.

The portrait of Sir John Gordon, landowner and former secretary for Scotland, was made by Bouchardon in 1728 while Gordon was on his Grand Tour in Rome. The French sculptor’s Neoclassical monuments have long enhanced the splendor of Versailles and he left his mark on Paris with the majestic Fountain of Four Seasons.

The portrait bust stayed at the Gordon family seat of Invergordon Castle in Invergordon, a small town of fewer than 4,000 inhabitants in the Scottish Highlands, for over two centuries. After the castle was sold in the 1920s, the bust was acquired by the local council at an auction in 1930. Its considerable art-historical importance was soon forgotten, and the treasure disappeared for decades until 1998, when it was discovered propping open a shed door in the nearby village of Balintore.

The item has been kept in storage by Highlands Council ever since, being too expensive to insure for public display.

A proposal to sell the bust was first made in 2014 but proved controversial, with some art historians arguing it should be loaned instead to Scottish museums. In 2023, the council was approached by an overseas private buyer via Sotheby’s auction house with an offer of more than £2.5 million ($3 million), trumping a previous estimate of £1.4 million ($1.8 million).

The Easter Ross Area Committee held a public consultation to let locals have their say on whether the Bouchardon statue should be sold, in accordance with Scottish law governing the fate of assets that have been classed as a “common good.” It promised that any funds raised by the sale would be endowed to the Invergordon Common Good Fund, which provides grants to support local projects.

Of 70 responses to this public consultation, 48 were in favor of selling the statue. In May, the Black Isle and Easter Ross Area Committee recommended the Highland council sell it and, yesterday, the council was granted permission by Tain Sheriff Court.

Local councillor Maxine Smith believed the interest on the sum made by the sale could be as much as £125,000 ($160,000) a year, which would be reinvested into the local community via the Invergordon Common Good Fund. Meanwhile, a museum-quality replica would go on display in the Highlands.

In 2017, the prized bust was included in “Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment,” a major exhibition organized by the Louvre Museum that also traveled to Los Angeles’s Getty Museum.