Arts

A New Hampshire woman bought a painting for $4 at Savers. Now it could sell for $250,000.

She bought the painting for $4 from a New Hampshire thrift store, not realizing it was by a famous American illustrator. Now it's headed to the auction.

By Katelyn Umholtz

September 7, 2023

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One person’s trash could be one New Hampshire woman’s $250,000 payday, after she unknowingly purchased a renowned artist’s painting for $4 at a Manchester thrift store.

The shopper bought a painting by N. C. Wyeth, a famous American illustrator from the early 1900s who was born in Needham, at a Savers in 2017. She didn’t know what she had, though there were a few times that she thought, even jokingly, it could be something special. Time passed, and the painting went from her bedroom wall to storage. 

It was when she was doing a home renovation this year that she found the painting, and this time, she decided to seriously check out what it was. So she asked Facebook’s users what they thought.

The post caught the eye of Lauren Lewis, an art conservator based out of Maine who once worked for the Wyeth Study Center, a department that manages Andrew Wyeth’s artwork and the work of his family, including his father, N. C. Wyeth.

In her profession, she’s used to people asking her if a work of art is the real deal. It usually isn’t. 

Then she saw the back of the painting — the red artist board was a Weber “Renaissance” panel, one that Lewis knew N. C. Wyeth used. 

“That made me look a little bit closer,” Lewis said. “I just suspected that it was something different.”

She met the owner of the painting to give it a closer look, and also got a second opinion from the Brandywine Museum, home to the Wyeth Study Center. The museum is located in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where N. C. Wyeth lived for many years until his death in 1945. 

Sure enough, the painting the New Hampshire woman found collecting dust and stuck between old posters at a thrift store was one of N. C. Wyeth’s works of art, “Ramona.” According to Bonhams Skinner, the auction house now responsible for selling the painting, it’s estimated to sell for $150,000 to $250,000.

“When I examined it, it’s in beautiful condition,” Lewis said. “It’s got a few scratches … but overall it’s in excellent condition. It’s really a mystery where it’s been for the last 80 years, but someone took care of it.”

And the mystery is part of the painting’s allure.

It was one of four illustrations Wyeth produced for a 1939 edition of the book “Ramona” by Helen Hunt Jackson. The celebrated illustrator often drew up art for the covers of magazines — like Norman Rockwell, N. C. Wyeth also did illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post — and novels. 

The painting shows a tense moment between the young woman, Ramona, and her foster mother to the left. He loved melodrama in his work, illustrating friction or even fights, said Kathleen Leland, an American and European art specialist at Bonhams Skinner.

Of the four paintings in this series, only one other had resurfaced until now. 

Though they aren’t sure where the other two are, or how this particular painting ended up at a Savers store, it was typical that N. C. Wyeth’s illustrations were sent to publishers by train or ended up with the estate of the author. 

But in Leland’s experience, a painting like Wyeth’s is usually brought to Bonhams Skinner by someone who inherited the work or an art dealer. 

This example, however, “is quite rare.” And though the story has blown up online and appeared in several publications, the woman who bought the painting has yet to share her name publicly.

What’s next for the painting and its thrifty New Hampshire consignor? It’s up for auction in Marlborough on Sept. 19. The auction is live, and though Leland said it’s much more exciting to do the bidding in person, interested parties can bid online. 

The bulk of the proceeds will go to the anonymous Savers shopper. 

“It’s been a wild few weeks here with it coming up for auction,” Lewis said. “I hope that whoever ends up purchasing it will love it as much as the woman who has it now.”