Entertainment04 October, 20262 min read
US Buyer Pays $30 For Gertrude Abercrombie Painting, Sells It For $1.35 Million
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A Michigan estate-sale purchase of $30 was later identified as Gertrude Abercrombie’s Alderman Merriam's Shells. The painting sold at Freeman’s in New York for about $1.35 million.
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$30 to $1.35M
A painting titled "Alderman Merriam's Shells" by Gertrude Abercrombie, a 1951 work, resurfaced after a buyer paid $30 for it at an estate sale in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Freeman's Auctions handled the sale, and the painting sold for $1.35 million at auction, setting a new world auction record for Abercrombie's work. The painting features shells belonging to Chicago Alderman Robert Merriam, who represented the city's 5th Ward from 1947 to 1955, and the ward included Hyde Park where Abercrombie lived and became a prominent figure in Chicago's art and music circles.
The buyer initially visited the estate sale looking for vinyl records, then turned the artwork over and noticed a name on the back that seemed familiar before paying $30. The painting had been estimated to fetch between $15,000 and $250,000 before it sold for $1.35 million, far exceeding the top of that range.
Milwaukee clue and proof
The collector chose to stay anonymous and later visited the Milwaukee Art Museum exhibition "The Whole World Is a Mystery" to see the Gertrude Abercrombie show. The collector found a 1952 Chicago Tribune photograph of the painting in its original frame in the exhibition catalogue, and the photograph showed the actual shells Abercrombie had painted. Dr Susan Weininger, a professor emerita of art history at Roosevelt University, authenticated the painting after she looked at it.
Freeman's Auctions said the painting depicts nine finely rendered seashells on a slate-grey surface, with a single conical shell suspended by a thread against a black wall, appearing to levitate above the rest. Zack Wirsum, Freeman's senior vice president and head of the Post War & Contemporary Art department, said, "I love it when good things happen to good people and when the story unfolds in reality just as we wrote it."
Ownership trail and legacy
Abercrombie gifted "Alderman Merriam's Shells" to Dr John T Reynolds of Kalamazoo in 1952 in exchange for medical services, and the artwork was subsequently displayed at exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee and Evanston between 1952 and 1953. The painting was last known to have been exhibited at the Chicago Design Center in 1953, after which it disappeared from public view for more than seven decades. The Economic Times said the painting measures just 8 by 11 inches and shows nine seashells arranged across a dark, muted setting.
Freeman's said the result was the first time an Abercrombie work had passed the $1 million mark, and the sale price was $1,352,600 including the buyer's premium. Abercrombie died in 1977, and the painting's rediscovery turned a $30 estate-sale purchase into a record-setting auction outcome.