One of the most important masterpieces by the great British painter J. M. W. Turner could be lost to public view when it appears on the market for the first time in 181 years.

Pope’s Villa at Twickenham goes on sale at Sotheby’s in London on July 9 with a starting price of £5 million, but is expected to approach or surpass the record of £17.7 million paid in 2006 for a later Turner oil, the most expensive British painting sold.

The money is needed to help to fund the restoration of Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where the painting has been on public view for 40 years.

Emmeline Hallmark, the auction house’s head of British paintings, said that there was “every chance” that the work would break the record set by Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San Giorgio.

“That painting was smaller than this and of Venice, rather than Turner’s home country. The subject matter of this painting is very personal to him. Also in the last two years the price for art in general has been going up and up.

“Turner is particularly hard to value because he is a one-off. All the recent sales of Turners have greatly exceeded their presale estimates.

“Partly this is because he appeals to collectors from so many different fields – from buyers of Old Masters to contemporary art collectors. Partly it’s because the chance to buy something like this is so rare. Turner created nearly 30,000 works of art but there are less than 20 major paintings which will ever become available on the open market because the rest are in public collections.”

Turner lived close to the scene of the painting in what was then a semi-rural area to the west of London. The main subject of the work, wrapped in scaffolding across the shimmering Thames, is the home of the poet Alexander Pope, one of Turner’s great sources of inspiration. The painting was the artist’s response to the scandalous rebuilding of the villa by its new owner, which he saw as an act of vandalism, Ms Hallmark said.

It was painted shortly after Turner’s appointment as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy in 1807 and is thought to be the first work that he signed with the additional “PP” after his signature.

He was 35 years old with more than 40 years of painting left in him, but his characteristic mastery of light patterns is already evident in the work.

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