He paid $30 for a painting at a Michigan estate sale. It sold for $1.35 million
Tiny signature leads collector to a long-lost masterpiece unseen for 75 years
Dubai: He went to a Michigan estate sale looking for the sort of things he usually collected — vintage furniture, vinyl records and other interesting finds.
Then a small painting caught his eye.
It was hardly imposing: An 8-by-11-inch canvas showing nine seashells against a dark background. But in the lower-left corner was a signature that made the longtime collector stop and look again: “abercrombie ’51.”
The price was $30.
He bought it.
Months later, that $30 purchase would sell at auction in New York for $1,352,600, setting a record for American surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie.
According to reports. the anonymous collector found the painting at an estate sale in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Although the signature intrigued him, he knew that a name on a canvas was no guarantee of authenticity.
So he started digging.
His search led him to Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery, an exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. He even changed his family holiday plans so he could visit.
There, he found the clue that transformed an intriguing $30 purchase into something extraordinary.
In the exhibition catalogue was a 1952 Chicago Tribune photograph showing the same painting in its original frame — alongside the actual shells Abercrombie had painted.
The work was Alderman Merriam’s Shells, painted in 1951 and unseen publicly for about 75 years.
Expert confirms the find
Dr Susan Weininger, an Abercrombie scholar and professor emerita of art history at Roosevelt University, examined the painting and authenticated it.
Its history was equally remarkable.
Abercrombie had given the painting to Dr John Reynolds of Kalamazoo in exchange for medical services. It remained with his family until its rediscovery this year.
The painting depicts nine seashells on a slate-grey surface, with one conical shell suspended by a thread against a black wall. The shells belonged to Robert Merriam, an alderman from Hyde Park, the Chicago neighbourhood where Abercrombie lived and worked.
The painting had appeared in six solo exhibitions in 1952 and 1953 before disappearing from public view.
From $30 to $1.35 million
When the work went to Freeman’s Auctions, it was estimated to fetch between $150,000 and $250,000.
Even that would have represented an extraordinary return on $30.
But when bidding opened in New York on October 1, five telephone bidders and several online buyers battled for it.
The hammer finally came down at $1.06 million.
With the buyer’s premium, the final price reached $1,352,600 — a new auction record for Abercrombie and the first time one of her works had crossed the $1 million mark.
For the collector who noticed a small signature on an overlooked painting at a Michigan estate sale, it was the ultimate reward for trusting his eye.
A $30 gamble had become a $1.35 million masterpiece.
