A Massachusetts auction dealer, Skinner Marlborough, sold a lost painting found in a New Hampshire attic — the artwork sold on Sept. 19, 2023, for $191,000. How a woman originally discovered the picture makes for an exciting story.
In her attic, a New Hampshire woman had the lost work of art, ‘Ramona’ by famous painter N. C. Wyeth, head of a family of painters. She had purchased the painting for $4. Wyeth’s signature was on the image, but the woman thought it was a forgery. Wyeth finished the oil painting for a 1939 edition of Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, Ramona, published in 1884.
The lady unwittingly purchased the painting after discovering it leaning against the wall of a Saver’s thrift shop in Manchester. Stacked with posters and prints, she only chose it because she was looking for frames she could reuse. The woman tried but couldn’t find any information about the painting. It ended up hanging on her bedroom wall. After a few years, she stashed it in her attic.
Sometime later, during springtime cleaning, she found the painting and posted pictures of it on a Facebook page of people dedicated to finding things lost and discovered in attics, under floorboards, in walls, and salvaged from abandoned homes.
A former curator named Lewis connected with her. Amazingly, he had handled paintings from three generations of the Wyeth family. He knew almost right away that it was real, not a forgery.
“While it certainly had some small scratches and it could use a surface clean, it was in remarkable condition considering none of us had any idea of its journey over the last 80 years,” Lewis told the Boston Globe, who originally covered the story.
It’s believed that the company that published Ramona passed the original painting on to an editor or Helen Hunt Jackson’s estate at some point. Art enthusiasts have found just one of Wyeth’s four completed masterpieces.
You never know what you can discover in a thrift or resale shop. Lost art-hunters have found seven lost masterpieces in 2021.
Happy famous artwork hunting.
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