This is the first time Sotheby’s has ever been involved in one of our sales.” Definitely this is something that doesn’t happen to us every day. “They said it was very much a genuine work of art and a great find,” Villar said.
The prestigious New York auction house called back with good news. “We shipped it to Sotheby’s so they could clean it, give us authentication and auction it off.” “The best next step seemed to be to contact someone who could authenticate it,” Villar said. They determined that Goodwill very well might have the genuine article in its hands. The Cortes painting was taken to the Goodwill Industries regional headquarters in Baltimore, where, spokesman Villar said, local art experts were invited to examine it. “Part of the reason we’re so cautious is that we had a piece of art come through years ago that sold for $50 and turned out to be worth $3,000.” It’s really, truly a treasure hunt to walk in the store,” she said. We get amazing things donated all the time. “This type of thing can happen in any Goodwill store. Instead, Tonelli, who has worked at the store for three years, called headquarters. Tonelli says the painting, had it not been singled out in the store, probably would have been priced at $100. She compared the signature on her painting with those she was able to call up on the computer. “The hair on the back of my neck was standing up by then,” she said. Some of those, she found through further Googling, had sold recently at prices nearing $60,000. He was best known for his Paris street scenes (like the one on Tonelli’s desk). A painter with remarkable Impressionistic flair, Cortes died in 1969. What turned up was this:īorn in 1882 in Lagny-sur-Marne, 20 miles east of Paris, Cortes was the son of a Spanish court painter, who was taught by his father and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In her office, she typed the artist’s name into Google.
“I could tell it was a real painting, and that it was older,” she said, “as opposed to something you might get at Ocean Gallery,” Ocean City’s warehouse store of affordable art. This painting, though, had an antique-looking frame, with a gold embossed nameplate carrying the artist’s last name, Cortes, and a French title, Marche aux fleurs (Flower Market). The thing with paintings and art is it’s hard to distinguish sometimes whether it’s real, or a print, or a copy.” So when I came back from vacation, that’s when I actually put my hands on it and took a look,” Tonelli said. “They had recognized it as something worth a second look. Luckily, some sharp-eyed store employees plucked the item from that day’s load of donations, suspecting that it might be something of unusual value. This is going to go a long way to help that.” “Our mission is about helping people – the less fortunate and disabled – with job readiness and career training. “We just lucked upon an opportunity to increase our ability to give back,” said Terri Tonelli, manager of the Easton store. This time, though, the piece in question wasn’t priced and put up for sale – and as a result, Goodwill Industries is $40,000 richer.
It’s not unusual for buried treasure to be found at a Goodwill store, but most tales of fantastic finds emerge after a customer has left the store with a bargain-priced item, only to find out its true value later. “It could have very easily ended up put in a pile, marked for $20,” said Ursula Villar, marketing and development director for Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake Inc. Instead, the painting that was dropped off along with the rest of the day’s intake at the Goodwill store in Easton – pots and pans, end tables, clothes, coffee machines, clock radios and the like – is in the hands of an anonymous connoisseur of French Impressionist art, or at least someone who appreciated it enough to fork over $40,600 for the piece at a Sotheby’s auction a few weeks ago.
Had it not been for the discerning eyes of Goodwill store employees, the research skills of the store manager and the help of a few art historians, the Parisian street scene painted by Impressionist Edouard-Leon Cortes might well be hanging today in a college dorm room, over a bed in some cheap Highway 50 motel, or on the faux wood-paneled walls of an Eastern Shore double-wide. Baltimore Sun eNewspaper Home Page Close Menu