{"id":59125,"date":"2025-01-31T03:36:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T03:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/someone-bought-this-painting-at-a-garage-sale-for-50-experts-say-its-a-lost-van-gogh-worth-15-million\/"},"modified":"2025-01-31T03:36:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T03:36:59","slug":"someone-bought-this-painting-at-a-garage-sale-for-50-experts-say-its-a-lost-van-gogh-worth-15-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=59125","title":{"rendered":"Someone Bought This Painting at a Garage Sale for $50. Experts Say It\u2019s a Lost van Gogh Worth $15 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n \"elimar\"
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The painting is signed “Elimar” in its bottom right corner.
\n LMI Group International, Inc.<\/span>
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During Vincent van Gogh<\/a>\u2019s year-long stay in a French asylum, he created some 150 paintings\u2014including\u00a0Irises<\/em><\/a> and\u00a0The Starry Night<\/em><\/a>. He also painted many interpretations of other artists\u2019 work, calling them \u201ctranslations.\u201d As van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother Theo, he was \u201cnot copying pure and simple\u201d but rather \u201ctranslating into another language, the one of colors, the impressions of chiaroscuro and white and black.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, experts say they\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

The collector sold the piece to the art research firm LMI Group International for an undisclosed amount in 2019. Since then, the company\u2019s researchers have been investigating the painting, and they recently released a 450-page\u00a0report<\/a> detailing their conclusion: It\u2019s a van Gogh.<\/p>\n

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\"reaper\"

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Vincent van Gogh’s\u00a0The Reaper<\/em>, an interpretation of Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Millet’s drawing of the same name<\/p>\n

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When art historian Maxwell L. Anderson<\/a>, chief operating officer of LMI Group, first laid eyes on the painting, he was \u201cstruck by what [he] saw,\u201d as he tells the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>\u2019s Kelly Crow. \u201cWas I all in? No,\u201d he adds. \u201cBut I was super intrigued.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the garage sale, the collector had been intrigued by the painting\u2019s impasto<\/a>, a technique involving thickly laid paint. The 18-inch-tall portrait depicts a white-bearded man by the sea who is smoking a pipe and repairing a fishing net. His downcast eyes betray contemplation, and his face is marked by ruddy coloring and deep smile lines. In the work\u2019s bottom right corner is a signature: the word \u201cElimar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the piece lacked van Gogh\u2019s famously vivid colors, Anderson saw \u201ctelltale signs of a deft painter at play,\u201d per the Wall Street Journal<\/em>. He also noticed a hair embedded in the brushwork.<\/p>\n

In its analysis of Elimar<\/em>, LMI Group combined science and technology with \u201ctraditional tools of connoisseurship, historical context, formal analysis and provenance research,\u201d as chairman, president and CEO Lawrence M. Shindell says in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The company hired Jennifer Mass<\/a>, president of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, to analyze the canvas\u2019 fibers and pigments. One particular red\u2014geranium lake, or PR-50\u2014introduced doubts. Van Gogh died by suicide in 1890, and researchers have always thought geranium lake was first patented around 1905.<\/p>\n

Mass brought in patent lawyer\u00a0Ben Appleton<\/a> to search for an earlier patent. After a month of research, his firm found an 1883 patent for PR-50\u2014a \u201cfind-within-a-find for conservators, who can now date and authenticate works containing this red pigment to the late 19th century,\u201d writes the Wall Street Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\"letters\"

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The letters of the “Elimar” inscription matched those of “Emile Zola” in van Gogh’s painting\u00a0Still Life With Bible\u00a0<\/em>(1885).<\/p>\n

OddCommon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A genetic analysis of the hair embedded in the painting revealed that it had belonged to someone with red or red-brown hair. As van Gogh\u2019s 35\u00a0self-portraits<\/a> illustrate, the artist had ginger locks. Additionally, researchers found that the letters in the painting\u2019s \u201cElimar\u201d inscription\u2014particularly the Es, Ms and As\u2014match those in an 1885 van Gogh painting.<\/p>\n

Van Gogh regularly neglected to sign his paintings, but why mark this one \u201cElimar\u201d? According to LMI Group, Elimar is the name of a character in the 1848 Danish novel\u00a0The Two Baronesses<\/em><\/a> by Hans Christian Andersen<\/a>\u2014one of van Gogh\u2019s\u00a0favorite<\/a> authors.<\/p>\n

According to the report, van Gogh painted Elimar<\/em> in 1889, during his first year at the sanitarium<\/a> in southern France. Experts think Elimar <\/em>is a so-called translation of Danish artist\u00a0Michael Ancher<\/a>\u2019s portrait of fisherman\u00a0Niels Gaihede<\/a>, \u201ca subject to which both [painter Paul] Gauguin<\/a> and van Gogh were drawn,\u201d per the statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as we saw the Ancher, I knew we were right,\u201d art historian and LMI Group researcher William Havlicek tells the Wall Street Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\"Michael

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Experts think\u00a0Elimar <\/em>was inspired by\u00a0Michael Ancher\u2019s portrait of fisherman Niels Gaihede.<\/p>\n

LMI Group International, Inc.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The analysis has provided \u201cfresh insight into the oeuvre of van Gogh, particularly as it relates to his practice of reinterpreting works by other artists,\u201d Anderson says in the statement. He thinks Elimar <\/em>is \u201ca form of spiritual self-portrait, allowing viewers to see the painter as he wished to be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n

LMI Group will soon begin showing Elimar <\/em>to major van Gogh scholars and dealers. They think the artwork is worth at least $15 million. Still, the painting\u2019s authorship is not yet widely accepted, and art experts are generally hesitant to draw conclusions about newly discovered works\u2019 authenticity.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople love it when things fall through the cracks, and it would be wonderful if they found a van Gogh,\u201d Richard Polsky<\/a>, an art authenticator who wasn\u2019t involved in the project, tells the Wall Street Journal<\/em>. \u201cBut they\u2019ve got to pin everything down and get a scholar at the\u00a0Van Gogh Museum<\/a> [in Amsterdam] to sign off on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Van Gogh Museum has seen the painting before. The anonymous buyer submitted it to the museum in 2019, and experts ruled that it wasn\u2019t the real deal. However, the museum hasn\u2019t yet responded to the new report.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, the most important thing is what the experts in Van Gogh think of the artwork,\u201d Robert Snell, co-owner and fine arts specialist at Revere Auctions in St. Paul, tells KARE<\/a>\u2019s Kent Erdahl.<\/p>\n

Snell is particularly interested in the painting\u2019s provenance. \u201cTrying to figure out how that piece ended up at a garage sale in Minneapolis is really the $15 million mystery,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

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