One woman joked that she bought a work by a famous artist for just $4. It turned out to be true
(CNN) – As an antique lover purchased a painting at a thrift store in 2017 that appeared to have NC Wyeth’s signaturehe joked that the item he had purchased for only $4 It may actually be a genuine work by the prolific artist and patriarch of the Wyeth family of painters in Maine. His joke was no laughing matter, and The painting is now estimated to sell for up to $250,000 at an auction in September.
According to specialists at auction house Bonhams Skinner, the seller unknowingly purchased the work at a Savers thrift store in Manchester, New Hampshire, looking for frames to reuse. According to the auction house, Wyeth’s painting had been hidden on a wall along with mostly damaged posters and prints.
The woman took the piece home but was unable to find any information about the work during a quick internet search. After hanging the painting in his bedroom for several years, he finally stored it in a closet in his house.
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Auction house Bonhams Skinner expects the painting to fetch between $150,000 and $250,000 at its September auction. (Image credit: Bonhams Skinner)
The woman rediscovered the painting while cleaning last May and this time posted images of the work a Facebook page called “Things Found in Walls”which, according to the group’s description, is “dedicated to stories about things you found in walls, dug up in your backyard, or found in the abandoned house across from your grandmother.”
The comments on the post led to her getting in touch Lauren Lewis, a former curator who worked with paintings from three generations of the Wyeths: NC Wyeth, his son Andrew Wyeth and his grandson Jamie Wyeth. After seeing the piece in person, Lewis was “99% sure it was authentic”he told the Boston Globe.
“While it certainly had some minor scratches and could use a surface cleaning, it was in exceptional condition considering that none of us had any idea of its journey over the past 80 years,” Lewis told the Globe.
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Wyeth previously produced covers for magazine and novel publishers. The painting, which goes on sale in September, is one of four paintings he made for a 1939 edition of the book “Ramona” by Helen Hunt Jackson, originally published in 1884. In it, Wyeth painted the young protagonist in front of her older adoptive mother, while a statue of a religious figure looms between the women.
Only one other of this series of illustrations was recovered, according to Bonhams Skinner. Auction house experts believe that Little, Brown and Company may have given the work to a publisher or the author’s estate.
The auction record for any member of the Wyeth family was set last year when the collection was soldMicrosoft co-founder Paul Allen at Christie’s New York, where Andrew Wyeth’s 1980 painting “Day Dream” sold for more than $23.2 millionmore than seven times the original high estimate of $3 million.