Painting bought for $100 in 1966 sells for $250,000
A painting at a thrift store in New York caught Helene Plotkin's eye. She paid less than $100 for the painting and took it home. It hung on her wall for decades, until last December, when her son became curious about the painting's origins.
"I never, never thought about it at all," Plotkin said in a recent telephone interview with the New York Times "other than I loved the painting."
The painting features a seated woman in black, turned towards the viewer, in what appears to be a home setting, with shelves lining the walls behind her. While the woman looks fairly realistic, the background features slashes of bright orange and yellow, indicative of the short-lived Fauvist style favored by artists like Henri Matisse following the Impressionist style in the early 1900s.
Plotkin's son, Barry, remembers his mother occasionally commenting on the painting's origins, but never investigating its provenance. At least not until late last year, when Barry decided to use Google's AI assistant to find more information about it.
After snapping a photo of the painting, he uploaded it to Gemini and asked what it could tell him. Within moments, Gemini flagged the painting as a Scottish Colorist work and suggested it might belong to F.C.B. Cadell, a well-known early 20th-century painter. Professional appraisers at Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull later confirmed it.
The painting was recently sold in a private auction for nearly $254,000.