A never-before-auctioned painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti will appear on the auction block this December at Sotheby’s in London.  A Christmas Carol was purchased in 1917 by Soap powder billionaire William Hesketh Lever.  Lever kept the work for his entire life, and are being offered for sale by his son, alongside works by William Holman Hunt and James Tissot.  “I have been here nearly 27 years, and I really think these are the best Victorian pictures we’ve had in that time. To see one Victorian painting of such quality would be remarkable, to get three in together is extraordinary.”  Grant Ford, a 19th-century expert at the auctioneers, said. (more…)