“Filthy, black, dirty” painting found in Connecticut barn auctioned for $7 million at Sotheby’s
A painting covered in soot was found in the attic of a barn and “had probably been there 100 years” turned out to be by a 17th century Dutch master.
When it was discovered in a Connecticut barn attic in 1998, only a trained eye could see that there was something special about a painting that was jet black, completely covered in grime. That person was George Wachter, chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s.
“It was filthy, black, dirty. You could hardly see it,” Wachter told Robb Report. But he had a hunch that it was “a killer,” and he convinced Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III to purchase the painting. And he was right on the money.
$7 million find in barn attic
The Saunders acquired the painting for $2.2 million not knowing what lay underneath soot that had been collecting for several decades. “It had probably been there 100 years,” Wachter speculated.
In order to bring the painting back to its original glory, the services of renowned New York art restorer Nancy Krieg were enlisted. Using solvents and cotton swabs she carefully uncovered a lush pastoral scene of Dutch Brazil painted by Frans Post.
View of Olinda, Brazil, With Ruins of the Jesuit Church was a work completed in 1666 by the in-demand painter. It became one of Tom Saunders’ most cherished paintings according to Wachter. Within two minutes of being put on the block at Sotheby’s in May, the masterpiece sold for $6 million plus an additional $1.37 million in fees. That was a new record for the Dutch master.
Who is Frans Post?
Post, who was born in 1612, was one of the first European-trained artists to paint landscapes of the Americas and furthermore one of the few who had actually been there. He spent eight years in the northeast of Brazil as part of the retinue of the colonial governor Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen after the Dutch seized the area from the Portuguese.
At age 32, after his stint in the Dutch West Indies, he returned to his hometown of Haarlem in Holland where he painted landscapes of the fauna and flora he had seen in Brazil either from memory or numerous sketches he had made while there. View of Olinda, Brazil, With Ruins of the Jesuit Church was completed during Post’s golden period according to Sotheby’s.
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