Painting bought for $30 at an estate sale: Gertrude Abercrombie’s lost masterpiece heads to auction for up to $250,000

An anonymous Michigan collector — described as an “old-school vinyl record and mid-century furniture hunter” — bought a painting this summer for just $30 at an estate sale. After noticing the signature “Abercrombie, ’51” in the lower-left corner, he realized it might be something special.

When he visited the traveling exhibition “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery” at the Milwaukee Art Museum, he was stunned to see a photo of his painting — “Alderman Merriam’s Shells” — in its original frame in the exhibition catalogue.

The painting was authenticated by Susan Weininger, an art historian at Roosevelt University considered the leading Abercrombie expert (according to Smithsonian Magazine). The buyer then contacted Freeman’s Auctions, a sponsor of the exhibition, and the auction house is now selling it in its “Post-War & Contemporary Art” auction on the Upper East Side, New York, on October 1.

The work depicts nine seashells that belonged to Robert Merriam, a Chicago City Council alderman for the Hyde Park district, where Abercrombie — a central figure of mid-20th-century Chicago art — lived and painted. One shell hangs suspended by a thread against a black background.

Zack Wirsum, vice president of Freeman’s, told Artnet: “The shells are alluringly awkward and seemingly lonely in a crowd, much like Abercrombie herself. It’s mesmerizingly mysterious, as with all her finest paintings.” Ironically, only weeks earlier he had told visitors that Abercrombie’s works — she died in 1977 at the age of 68 — are sometimes discovered at estate sales.

Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–1977), called the “queen of the bohemian artists”, is at the center of a critical revival (the retrospective “The Whole World Is a Mystery”); her auction record stands at $864,000.

Source: New York Post