A painting bought for just $30 at a Michigan estate sale this past July has turned out to be a long-lost 1951 work by Chicago surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, and it's now headed to auction with an estimate of up to $250,000. The buyer, whose identity has not been made public, spotted a faint signature in the lower-left corner reading “Abercrombie, '51” and decided the painting was worth a closer look.
That instinct paid off. According to Freeman's, the auction house that will offer the piece, the buyer paid the $30 asking price specifically to investigate the mysterious signature further. The painting, titled “Alderman Merriam's Shells,” had gone unseen publicly for roughly 75 years before its rediscovery this year, per the same account.
Freeman's plans to sell the piece in its Post-War & Contemporary Art Auction on October 1 in New York, with an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000, the auction house says. As the New York Post reports, Freeman's is handling the sale out of its Upper East Side location in Manhattan.
A Shell Collection With Chicago Roots
A Shell Collection With Chicago Roots The canvas depicts nine carefully rendered seashells arranged on a stark, slate-gray surface, per Freeman's description of the work. The shells reportedly belonged to Robert Merriam, who was an alderman, according to the New York Post.
The painting's path from Chicago to a Michigan estate sale traces back to a gift. Invaluable's auction listing states that Abercrombie gave the work to Dr. John T. Reynolds of Kalamazoo, Michigan, in exchange for medical services in 1952. How it eventually ended up hanging in a dark corner of a hallway leading to the garage at an estate sale, priced at $30, remains part of the mystery surrounding its rediscovery.
Verifying the Signature
Before contacting Freeman's, the buyer had reportedly visited the exhibition “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery” at the Milwaukee Art Museum, according to the New York Post. That visit apparently sharpened the buyer's suspicion that the signature was genuine, prompting outreach to the auction house.
Abercrombie scholar Susan Weininger authenticated the painting, confirming it as a piece the artist painted in 1951, according to UPI. The piece had appeared in an exhibition catalog while still in its original frame.
Freeman's specialist Zack Wirsum said the house “could not be more thrilled to steward” the rediscovered painting, according to the New York Post. Wirsum also described the shells in the composition as alluringly awkward and seemingly lonely in a crowd, a characterization the Post attributes to Artnet. Wirsum noted that Abercrombie paintings are sometimes discovered at estate sales, per the same report.
Who Was Gertrude Abercrombie
Abercrombie was a prominent figure in Chicago's mid-20th-century art scene, living and painting out of the city's Hyde Park neighborhood, according to the New York Post. She died in 1977 at age 68. Freeman's notes that museum retrospectives and scholarly attention have brought renewed recognition to her work in recent years, including the 2025 retrospective that opened at the Carnegie Museum of Art before traveling to the Colby College Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Norton Museum of Art.
That renewed spotlight has translated into rising prices. Per MutualArt, Abercrombie's paintings have averaged $133,890 at auction over the past 12 months, with turnover ranging from $26,500 to $6.1 million and peaking in 2025. Her auction record stands at about $1 million for “Message for Mercy,” sold at Sotheby's New York in 2025, MutualArt reports.
Other recent sales underscore the momentum behind her market. Freeman's own sales history lists Abercrombie's 1954 painting “The Pink Tent” as having sold for $312,500. As reported by Heni, “Silo at Aledo” sold for $864,100 at Bonhams in November 2024, while “Message for Mercy” fetched $1.02 million at Sotheby's — more than five times its low estimate. A Hindman's sale covered by Chicago Gallery News saw “Self and Cat (Possims)” bring $375,000 and “Self-Imprisonment” realize $281,250.
Whether “Alderman Merriam's Shells” reaches its own $250,000 high estimate will become clear when Freeman's Post-War & Contemporary Art Auction opens October 1. For now, the painting stands as a reminder that a forgotten name scrawled in the corner of a canvas can be worth far more than a $30 asking price.
