Century-Old Connecticut Barn Discovery: Forgotten Painting Unveils Hidden $7 Million Secret at Auction
Now, the painting has sold at auction for $7 million after just two minutes of bidding.
How Frans Post’s “View Of Olinda, Brazil” Was Transformed After Its Rediscovery
When the painting was discovered in the barn attic, it was unrecognizable, Wachter remembered.
“It was filthy, black, dirty,” Wachter said, according to Robb Report. “You could hardly see it.”
But Wachter had a hunch that the unknown painting hidden under the grime would be spectacular, and he convinced two collectors to believe in his vision and buy the work for $2.2 million.
“I said, ‘This is a killer,’” Wachter recalled. “And so they trusted me because they couldn’t see it. It was jet black.”
Wachter got the premier conservator of Dutch and Flemish paintings in New York, Nancy Krieg, to help restore the painting. Krieg used a process of cleaning the painting with cotton swabs and solvents, working to reveal a Brazilian landscape behind the dust and grime.
According to David Pollack, senior vice president and head of Old Master paintings at the Sotheby’s auction house, art restoration is painstaking work.
“It’s an art and a science, the process of cleaning,” Pollack said.
Slowly but surely, little bits of the painting began to be revealed as Krieg worked to restore the painting. The sky became incredibly blue, ruins of a church could be seen in the foreground, with people and animals then emerging around it.
“There was a little anteater in the corner, and all these animals running around and all the different kinds of figures,” Wachter said.
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