$30 estate sale find sells for $1,352,600

A painting by figurative painter Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-77) bought at Michigan estate sale last year for $30 has sold at auction for $1,352,600. The final price exceeded the high pre-sale estimate of $200,000 by more than six times and set a new world record price for the artist.

Gertrude Abercrombie was a self-taught artist. Her degree was in Romance languages and she was working in advertising when she began to paint during World War II. Abercrombie’s work quickly received positive reviews from critics and galleries and she got her first one woman show at the Chicago Art Institute in 1944.

The 8×11-inch oil on masonite painting entitled Alderman Merriam’s Shells was made in late 1951. Robert Merriam was the alderman of the Chicago neighborhood where Abercrombie lived and photos from the period indicate she was a friend of the family. Merriam loaned her some shells from his collection which she painted in an abstract, surreal space.

Shortly after she painted it, Abercrombie gave the work to Dr. John T. Reynolds of Kalamazoo, Michigan, as payment for an operation he performed on her in early 1952. By April, Reynolds had begun loaning it for exhibition in several contemporary art galleries in New York, Chicago and Milwaukee. In a Chicago Tribune article about her one-woman show there, Abercrombie described her approach:

“I like to paint mysteries or fantasies — things that are real in the mind, but not real in the ordinary sense of the word. I’m not interested in complicated or commonplace subjects. Instead, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.”

The sea shells fit this esthetic to a tee, simple but captured in meticulous detail and in impossible positions that sets each of their individual features off to the best advantage. The shells themselves were at Chicago show with the painting and the subjects and portrait were photographed together in the Chicago Tribune.

Alderman Merriam’s Shells was offered for sale at several of the galleries where it was shown in 1952 and 1953 at prices ranging from $50 to $150. Nobody bought it then, and Dr. Reynolds kept it until his death. It was at the sale of his estate that the current seller spotted it as the bargain of a lifetime. Pretty crazy that it would sell for just 30 bucks 70 years after it was priced at 50 bucks when the artist was still living.

* This article was originally published here