A woman joked that she bought a famous artist’s work for only $4, and it turned out to be true

(CNN) – When he is a fan of antiques He bought a painting that appeared to be signed by N.C. Wyeth at a thrift store in 2017They joked that the item for which he was bought $4 only It could in fact be the real work of the prolific artist and patriarch of the Wyeth family of painters in Maine. His joke was not laughable, and The painting is now expected to fetch up to $250,000 at auction in September.

According to specialists from the Bonhams Skinner auction house, the seller unknowingly bought the work from the Savers thrift store in Manchester, New Hampshire, while he was looking for tires to reuse. According to the auction house, Wyeth’s painting was hidden on the wall along with mostly damaged posters and prints.

The woman took the piece home but was unable to find any information about the business with a quick Internet search. After hanging the painting in his bedroom for several years, he finally put it in a safe at home.

Undefined

The woman rediscovered the painting last May while cleaning it up, and this time she posted pictures of work on it Facebook page entitled “Things Found on Walls”and is dedicated to “stories of things you found in walls, or dug up in your backyard, or in that abandoned house across from your grandmother’s,” according to the collection’s description.

Comments on the post led her to call Lauren Lewis, former curator With portraits of three generations of the Wyeth family: N.C. Wyeth, his son, Andrew Wyeth, and grandson, Jimmy Wyeth. After seeing the piece in person Lewis was “99% sure he was right.”he told the Boston Globe.

“While it certainly had some minor scratches and could need some surface cleaning, it was in exceptional condition considering none of us had any idea of ​​its journey over the past 80 years,” Lewis told the Globe.

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Wyeth has produced covers for periodicals and novels for publishers. The painting, which will go on sale in September, is one of four he completed for the 1939 edition of the book “Ramona” by Helen Hunt Jackson, originally published in 1884. In it, Wyeth depicts the young main character confronting his aging adoptive mother, while a statue of a religious figure looms over the women.

Of this series of illustrations, only one has been recovered. According to Bonhams Skinner. Auction house specialists believe that Little, Brown and Company may have given the work to a publisher or to the author’s estate.

The auction record for any member of the Wyeth family was set last year during the sale of the collectionMicrosoft co-founder Paul Allen at Christie’s in New York, where Andrew Wyeth’s 1980 painting “Day Dream” sold for more than $23.2 million.That’s more than seven times the highest initial estimate of $3 million.

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