| | | Previously unknown Vincent van Gogh painting worth $15 million bought at Minnesota garage sale for $50: experts
Natalie O'Neill
January 29, 2025 at 6:56 PM
A long-lost Van Gogh painting is believed to have been found at a garage sale in Minnesota.
Struck Gogh-ld.
A newly discovered Vincent van Gogh painting worth $15 million was likely found at a dusty Minnesota garage sale — where a buyer plunked down less than $50 for the world-famous artist’s work, according to a team of New York-based experts.
The previously unknown oil portrait depicts a fisherman smoking a pipe and was created in 1889 — the same year van Gogh painted his masterpiece “The Starry Night” at a psychiatric ward in southern France, ArtNews.com reported Wednesday.
A red hair was found embedded in the paint, which was proven to be from early 19th century France. LMI Group International, Inc.
The impressionist painting was snapped up at a Minnesota garage sale by an anonymous antiques collector for less than $50 several years ago and is now believed to be worth a whopping $15 million, according to a team of roughly 20 experts.
“[I was] struck by what I saw,” Maxwell Anderson, a former Metropolitan Museum of Art curator, told The Wall Street Journal.
He said smile lines framing the fisherman’s face were van Gogh-esque and that there was a single red hair — the hue of the late artist’s locks — embedded in the paint.
To determine if it was authentic, he teamed up with a group of conservators, scientists and historians, who now believe the work was made by the troubled genius, the paper reported.
The experts also matched red pigment in the painting to a brand of paint used in southern France in the late 19th century.
The painting was bought for less than $50 at a garage sale. Kathy images – stock.adobe.com
The piece depicts a fisherman with a white beard repairing his net next to an empty shoreline with the word “Elimar”— likely the subject’s name — scrawled in the lower right-hand corner, the outlet reported.
“This moving likeness embodies van Gogh’s recurring theme of redemption, a concept frequently discussed in his letters and art,” Anderson said in a statement. “Through Elimar, van Gogh creates a form of spiritual self-portrait, allowing viewers to see the painter as he wished to be remembered.”
The painting still needs to be given a thumbs up by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam before it’s officially recognized as authentic.
While authenticating the art, a team of roughly 20 experts — from fields including chemistry, art and patent law — joined forces for the New York-based art research firm LMI Group, which bought the painting from the anonymous antiques collector in 2019.
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