Possible Van Gogh painting found at Minnesota garage sale

Experts in New York, including a former curator of ancient art at the Metropolitan Museum, may have discovered a previously unknown Vincent van Gogh portrait of a fisherman. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the painting first surfaced a few years ago at a garage sale in Minnesota and was sold to an antiques collector for less than $50.

If the painting is in fact a Van Gogh, it would have been painted in 1889, the year the artist spent at a psychiatric asylum in the south of France. While there, he created around 150 paintings, including familiar works such as “The Starry Night” and “Almond Blossom,” which many Minnesotans probably saw in the “Immersive Van Gogh” spectacle or in the exhibition “Van Gogh and the Olive Trees” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

If this painting is a Van Gogh, it would be number 151 from that series. It portrays a fisherman wearing a round hat, smoking a pipe, and working on a fishing net against a background of sea and sand. The painting shows elements of Van Gogh’s work from that time, including thickly painted lines. The fisherman’s white beard curls up from under his chin, making it almost look like a random swath of foam. The text “Elimar” is written in the bottom right-hand corner.

Maxwell Anderson, the COO of New York-based art-research firm LMI Group International, who was previously a curator of ancient art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other museums, has been working with a team of around 20 experts, including conservators, scientists and historians to figure out if the discovered painting truly is a Van Gogh.

LMI purchased the painting from the art dealer in 2019 for an undisclosed sum and it has been under investigation ever since. So far, over $30,000 has been put into solving the mystery.

If the painting is a Van Gogh, it would be worth at least $15 million.

Anderson believes the clue to this being a Van Gogh, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, is the “Elimar” in the lower right-hand corner. The LMI Group said the artist of this painting signed it with brushstrokes similar to how Van Gogh wrote “Emile Zola” in the 1885 painting “Still Life with Bible.” (Émile Zola was a French novelist, journalist and playwright who was also known for his defense of painter Édouard Manet.)

Van Gogh did not sign many of his works, so the lack of a “Vincent” signature isn’t unusual. This is another clue, according to the LMI Team.