Estate sale painting bought for $50 identified as long-lost work worth nearly $500k

A painting bought for just US$30 (about $50) at an estate sale is expected to sell for as much as US$250,000 at a New York auction after being identified as a long-lost work by acclaimed American surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie.

The artwork, titled Alderman Merriam’s Shells, was discovered earlier this year by an unnamed collector who purchased it after noticing the inscription “Abercrombie ’51” in the lower corner.

According to Artnet and Freeman’s auction house, the buyer later realised the painting may be important after visiting an Abercrombie exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

At the exhibition, the person looked through a catalogue of Abercrombie’s work and saw an archival photograph from 1952 of the painting they had just purchased.

Gertrude Abercrombie’s painting Alderman Merriam’s Shells was bought at an estate sale in Michigan for US$30. Photo / Freeman’s

The owner contacted art historian Susan Weininger, an authority on Abercrombie’s work, who confirmed the painting was genuine, according to Smithsonian magazine.

The 1951 painting depicts nine seashells belonging to Robert Merriam, a Chicago City Council alderman who represented Hyde Park, the neighbourhood where Abercrombie lived and worked.

Unlike many of her better-known dreamlike compositions featuring cats, moons and other symbolic imagery, the shell painting is notable for being drawn from real objects, according to Artnet.

Freeman’s auction house senior vice-president Zack Wirsum described the work as “mesmerisingly mysterious”.

“This was painted during her most productive period, a moment when realism was just as important to Gertrude as the magical,” Wirsum said.

Abercrombie had gifted the painting to Dr John Reynolds in exchange for medical services. Photo / United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs

Just weeks before the discovery, Wirsum had been telling visitors to an Abercrombie exhibition that works by the artist still occasionally emerge from estate sales.

“Little did I know that one of those ‘once in a while’s would occur less than a month later,” Wirsum said.

“We could not be more thrilled to now steward this magnificent rediscovery to the next chapter of its fascinating story.”

The auction house’s research into the painting’s history found Abercrombie had gifted it to John Reynolds, a doctor in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in exchange for medical services.

It remained in Reynolds’ family collection for decades, effectively hidden from the public for around 75 years before resurfacing at the estate sale.

Abercrombie’s paintings once typically sold for around US$10,000. More recently, dozens of works have exceeded US$100,000 at auction, while her 1950 painting Message for Mercy became the first of her works to top US$1 million when it sold at Sotheby’s last year.