A Michigan man who paid just $30 for a small painting at an estate sale has made an extraordinary discovery.
The artwork, later confirmed to be an original painting by American surrealist artist Gertrude Abercrombie, sold for $1,352,600 at Freeman’s Auctions in New York on Oct. 1, 2026, setting a new auction record for the artist.
The painting, titled Alderman Merriam’s Shells, had been missing from public view for about 75 years before it resurfaced at a Michigan estate sale in July. Its final auction price was more than five times the highest estimate set by the auction house, turning a modest purchase into one of the year’s notable art discoveries.
The buyer has remained anonymous. According to Freeman’s Auctions, he is a longtime collector of records and mid-century furniture who spotted the painting in a dark corner of a hallway leading to a garage. Other shoppers at the sale had apparently overlooked it.
The discovery became even more remarkable when the buyer learned that the painting was a genuine work by Abercrombie, a Chicago-based artist known for her unusual, dreamlike paintings. The sale also marked the first time one of her paintings had crossed the $1 million mark, according to the auction house.
The small oil painting measures just 8 by 11 inches. It shows nine seashells arranged on a slate-gray surface, with one conical shell hanging from a thread against a black wall.
At first, the buyer had only a possible clue to the painting’s identity: a faint signature in the lower-left corner that read “Abercrombie, ’51.”
A signature alone was not enough to prove that the painting was genuine. The buyer began researching the artist and eventually learned about the exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
He changed his family’s vacation plans to visit the exhibition. There, he found a photograph in the exhibition catalog that helped solve the mystery.
This is Getrude Abercrombie’s “Alderman Merriam’s Shells.”It was bought in an Michigan estate sale for $30 in July.It sold for $1.3 million this week at @FreemansAuction. pic.twitter.com/Wph6kb1W3d
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) October 3, 2026According to CNN, a 1952 Chicago Tribune clipping showed the same painting in its original frame, displayed beside the actual seashells that Abercrombie had used as her subjects. The image provided a key link between the artwork found at the estate sale and the painting documented decades earlier.
The buyer then brought the artwork to Freeman’s Auctions, which had sponsored the Milwaukee exhibition.
Dr. Susan Weininger, an Abercrombie scholar and professor emerita of art history at Roosevelt University, examined the painting and confirmed that it was an authentic work by the artist, per People.
The painting was also found in its original frame. Before the auction, it was cleaned and revarnished to improve its appearance.
Art restorer Julian Baumgartner described the painting’s condition in a video documenting the conservation work.
“It was drab, missing its life, but now cleaned, retouched, and revarnished, it’s alive and radiant,” he said.
Gertrude Abercrombie was an American surrealist painter who lived from 1909 to 1977. She spent much of her life in Chicago, where she became known for paintings that combined familiar objects with strange, dreamlike settings.
She is often called the “Bohemian Queen” of American art. Her work frequently featured seashells, owls, cats, doorways and other objects placed against dark or empty backgrounds.
Abercrombie’s paintings often looked simple at first glance, but their unusual settings gave them a mysterious quality. Seashells were among her recurring subjects and sometimes appeared cracked or marked with holes.
In 1945, she explained her artistic approach in words that reflected this style: “I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace. I like and like to paint simple things that are a little strange. My work comes directly from my inner consciousness and it must come easily. It is a process of selection and reduction.”
The shells in Alderman Merriam’s Shells belonged to Robert Merriam, an alderman from Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Abercrombie lived and worked in the area, and the shells became the subject of a painting that would eventually gain international attention at auction.
The artwork was not originally sold by the artist. Instead, Abercrombie gave it to Dr. John Reynolds, a physician in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in exchange for medical services.
After Reynolds died, the painting remained with his family. It eventually appeared at the July 2026 estate sale, where the anonymous collector bought it for $30.
Before disappearing from public view, the painting had appeared in six of Abercrombie’s solo exhibitions between 1952 and 1953.
Freeman’s Auctions estimated that Alderman Merriam’s Shells would sell for between $150,000 and $250,000. Even the high estimate would have represented a huge increase over the original $30 purchase price.
However, the bidding went much higher.
Five telephone bidders and several online participants competed for the painting during the auction in New York. The hammer price reached $1.06 million before the buyer’s premium brought the final sale price to $1,352,600.
The result set a new auction record for Abercrombie’s work, surpassing the previous record of $1.02 million set in 2025 when Sotheby’s sold her painting Message for Mercy.
Freeman’s senior vice president Zachary Wirsum celebrated the discovery and the result. In a statement before the sale, he said: “No fairytale would be complete without a storybook ending, and Gertrude Abercrombie’s Alderman Merriam’s Shells selling for a new auction record is as happily ever after as it gets.”
The auction house also praised the buyer for recognizing the painting’s potential and taking steps to establish its identity.
Related: In 2005, Bill Keith dropped out of college to build his dying father’s protein bar recipe into Perfect Bar with his family’s 13 children; Forbes later valued it at $300 million
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