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0 When an antiques enthusiast purchased a painting that appeared to bear the signature of N.C. Wyeth at a thrift store in 2017, she joked that the $4 item might actually be a real work by the prolific Maine artist and patriarch of the Wyeth family of painters. Her joke was no laughing matter, and the painting is now estimated to fetch as much as $250,000 at auction in September.
According to specialists at Bonhams Skinner auction house, the seller unknowingly purchased the work at a Savers thrift store in Manchester, New Hampshire, while searching for frames to reuse. The Wyeth painting had been stashed against a wall along with mostly damaged posters and prints, according to the auction house.
The woman took the piece home but could not find any information about the work with a quick internet search. After hanging the painting in her bedroom for several years, she eventually stored it in a closet in her home.
She rediscovered the painting this past May while cleaning, and this time posted images of the work on a Facebook page titled “Things Found in Walls,” which is dedicated to “stories of things you have found in walls, dug up in your backyard, or in that abandoned house across the street from your grandma’s,” according to the group’s description.
