Woman’s $4 Find From Thrift Store Is ‘Long-Lost Painting’ Worth Thousands

A painting purchased for just $4 at a thrift store has been predicted to make as much as $250,000 at auction, leaving the antique fan who picked it up for the frame completely stunned.

An anonymous woman from New Hampshire was shopping when she stumbled on the piece of art that turned out to be a valuable long-lost collectable.

The woman, who is passionate about antiques, was in search of frames to repurpose when she stumbled on the artwork at a Savers thrift store in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2017.

Bought for just $4. The painting bore the signature of Newell Convers Wyeth, a painter from the late 1800s.

Taking it home, she spent time trying to find out the picture’s origins but was unable to find anything online. Before long, the painting ended up consigned to a closet in the house.

“She was antiquing in search of old frames to repurpose when they found a large stack of frames leaning against the wall, mostly damaged posters and prints. The Wyeth painting, which was quite heavy and dusty, was in the middle of the stack and the consignor lifted it out and put it in a shopping cart,” Sheri Middleton from Bonhams Skinner online action and appraisal company told Newsweek.

In May of this year, while cleaning her home, the woman found the painting and posted some pictures of it on the Facebook page called Things Found in Walls.

The post caught attention and quickly she was directed to the Brandywine Museum, and Lauren Lewis, a conservator in Maine.

Lewis drove three hours to see the painting and her excitement upon the first viewing was enough for the woman to realize she had inadvertently picked up something special.

The painting Ramona by Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945) is now predicted to fetch between $150,000 and $250,000 at a forthcoming Bonhams Skinner auction in September 2023.

The painting belongs to a series of four works that the artist created for the 1939 edition of Helen Hunt Jackson’s book Ramona, an original publication that dated back to 1884. It portrays a young woman named Ramona staring at her elderly foster mother Señora Moreno.

Lewis said that the original painting discovery would represent a huge transformation for the finder’s family. She said: “These individuals aren’t financially affluent and I am genuinely thrilled that, as she suggested, this discovery could be transformative for her life. It’s an achievement both for them and for the art world, reunited with this long-lost painting.”

Earlier this year a woman told Newsweek how she sold plates she had found at a thrift store for just $6 for thousands after they were confirmed to be genuine Picasso works.