Prized Gertrude Abercrombie Painting, Priced at $30 at an Estate Sale, Heads to Auction for $250,000

Missing for decades, a Gertrude Abercrombie painting will find itself some collector’s prize this October at Freeman’s.

Of the lots scheduled for Freeman’s postwar and contemporary art auction, Alderman Merriam’s Shells (1951), by the celebrated Chicagoan artist, surely has the best story. According to the house, the enigmatic still life of seashells scattered in a deep void was spotted this summer at a “picked-over” estate sale in Michigan. Hung in a corner of a dark hallway, it carried a $30 price tag and a nearly overlooked signature in the corner reading “Abercrombie.”

“Uncertain but intrigued,” its finder brought the canvas to the Milwaukee Art Museum, which was then hosting an Abercrombie survey. In a serendipitous stroke, the exhibition catalog included an archival photograph of the very painting, which had originally been illustrated in a 1952 Chicago Review piece on Abercrombie’s exhibition at Newman Brown Gallery.

Authenticated by leading Abercrombie scholar Susan Weininger, then handed to Freeman’s (a sponsor of the Milwaukee show), Alderman Merriam’s Shells’s $30 price tag was replaced with a $150,000–$250,000 estimate. Bids will start at $75,000.

Haunting but visually restrained, the painting depicts nine delicately rendered seashells, one suspended by a thread against a black background. The shells belonged to Robert Merriam, an alderman in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where the artist lived and worked, the auction house said.

In a statement, Zachary Wirsum, senior vice president and head of Freeman’s postwar and contemporary art department, marveled at the fact he’d only recently told visitors to the Milwaukee show that Abercrombie’s paintings still occasionally appear at estate sales. “Little did I know that one of those ‘once in a while’s would occur less than a month later,” he said.