Gertrude Abercrombie painting bought for $30 at Michigan estate sale fetches $1.35 million at auction

Discovery at a Kalamazoo estate sale

A collector searching for vinyl records and furniture at an estate sale in Kalamazoo, Michigan, purchased a forgotten oil painting for $30 after noticing it in a corridor leading to a garage. Arriving late to the sale at the former residence of physician Dr. John T. Reynolds, the buyer found most high-value items already gone before spotting the 20-by-28-centimeter Masonite board hanging in a dark corner. The still life depicted seashells and bore the inscription Abercrombie, 51 in the lower left corner. Recognizing the signature of Chicago artist Gertrude Abercrombie, the buyer secured the piece and left the home.

Zachary Wirsum, a senior vice president at Freeman's auction house, recounted the buyer's reaction and the fortunate nature of the find.

I think, objectively, had he not purchased it, this would have just ended up in the dumpster. So I think that he saved it from forever being lost in time.

Medical barter and seven decades in obscurity

The painting, titled Alderman Merriam's Shells, originated in 1951 as a depiction of shells belonging to Chicago alderman Robert Merriam. Merriam represented Chicago's 5th Ward, which encompassed the Hyde Park neighborhood where Abercrombie lived and participated in local art and jazz circles, between 1947 and 1955. In 1952, Abercrombie gave the painting to Dr. Reynolds as payment-in-kind for medical treatment. Between 1952 and 1953, the artwork was exhibited across New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Evanston, making its final recorded public appearance at the Chicago Design Center in 1953. Following that exhibition, the painting remained inside the Reynolds family home for over seven decades, uncataloged in private hands.

Archival identification and stylistic significance

After the purchase, the buyer visited a retrospective at the Milwaukee Museum of Art and identified the work in an archival 1952 Chicago Tribune photograph showing the painting in its original frame alongside the physical shells used as models. Susan Weininger, an art historian and professor emerita at Roosevelt University who began cataloging Abercrombie's oeuvre in the late 1970s, authenticated the piece. Scholars consider the painting a turning point where Abercrombie embraced surrealism, marking her first depiction of seashells and her signature broken shell motif. The composition features nine shells resting on a flat plane while a tenth hovers in a dark void, with each shell illuminated by separate light sources from opposing angles.

Restoration and record auction result

Before the sale, conservators treated the Masonite board to remove decades of dirt, surface grime, and severely yellowed protective varnish. Freeman's initially assigned the restored painting a pre-sale estimate of $150,000 to $250,000. When the lot went to auction, intense bidding between two private collectors pushed the price to $1,352,600 (approximately €1.2 million or 1.12 million Swiss francs), surpassing the high estimate by more than five times. An anonymous collector from the San Francisco Bay Area submitted the winning bid. The sale established a world auction record for Abercrombie, whose surrealist work has experienced a broader institutional resurgence.