Everyone dreams of picking out a valuable find at a garage sale. Someone paid $50 for a painting and now it may actually be worth $15 million.
During Vincent van Gogh’s year-long stay in a French asylum, he created some 150 paintings - including two of his most famous: Irises and The Starry Night. He also painted many interpretations of other artists’ work, calling them “translations.” As van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother Theo, he was “not copying pure and simple” but rather “translating into another language, the one of colours, the impressions of chiaroscuro and white and black.”
Now, experts say they’ve identified a long-lost van Gogh translation: an oil portrait of a red-cheeked fisherman, which an antiques collector purchased at a garage sale in Minnesota for under $50.
The collector sold the piece - called Elimar - to the art research firm LMI Group International for an undisclosed amount in 2019. Since then, the company’s researchers have been investigating the painting, and they recently released a report detailing their conclusion: It’s a van Gogh.
LMI Group will soon begin showing Elimar to major van Gogh scholars and dealers. They think the artwork is worth at least $15 million. Still, the painting’s authorship is not yet widely accepted, and art experts are generally hesitant to draw conclusions about newly discovered works’ authenticity.
“People love it when things fall through the cracks, and it would be wonderful if they found a van Gogh,” Richard Polsky, an art authenticator who wasn’t involved in the project, told the Wall Street Journal. “But they’ve got to pin everything down and get a scholar at the Van Gogh Museum [in Amsterdam] to sign off on it.”
Another expert said: “Trying to figure out how that piece ended up at a garage sale in Minneapolis is really the $15 million mystery,”
Today's Articles
Indus Valley Civilization: There's a $1 million reward being offered if you can decode this ancient script.
Stunning Images: The Travel Photographer of the Year competition has unveiled the winners of its 2024 contest.
Unsolicited Advice: When Kevin Kelly had his 68th birthday, he gifted his children bits of advice he wished he had known at their age.
Funny Celebrity Quotes: If you're feeling like having a bit of a chuckle, hopefully some of these will do the trick.