View of Heidelberg with Rainbow ranks as one of the greatest and loveliest of Turner's landscapes in watercolour.

Henry Wemyss, Sotheby's

The new owners of the Turner, art dealers Thomas Agnew and Son, first bought the same picture 93 years ago for just �4,300 ($6,000).

They later sold it to Sir Donald Currie and it has remained in his family ever since.

The Important British Pictures auction at Sotheby's also saw another record-breaking bid for a piece by John Zoffany.

The eighteenth century artist's work, The Dutton Family in the Drawing Room of Sherborne Park, Gloucestershire fetched �3.2m ($4.9m).

Atmospheric

The final bid of �2,038,500 ($2,846,285) at Sotheby's auction house in London set the record for a piece by Turner.

The work dates from the early 1840s and is one of a group of watercolours of German and Swiss views which Turner drew between 1840 and 1848.

Henry Wemyss, senior director and Sotheby's specialist in British drawings and watercolours said: "View of Heidelberg with Rainbow ranks as one of the greatest and loveliest of Turner's landscapes in watercolour.

"It is breathtakingly atmospheric and highly romantic with its incredible observation and attention to detail, all translated with a lightness of touch, evocative brushstrokes and blending of colours, simultaneously both bright and yet subtle."

The former record for a British watercolour was �826,500 ($1.1m) for a work by John Frederick Lewis which was sold at Sotheby's in 1996.