A visitor looks at paintings on display for sale at a roadside stall during “Chitra Santhe,” a day-long annual art carnival organised by Chitrakala Parishath, in Bengaluru, India, on January 5, 2025. (Photo by IDREES MOHAMMED / AFP via Getty Images)
By Ole Braatelien January 31, 2025 at 6:00am
One man’s trash is another man’s millions?
Maybe so.
At least for the collector who purchased a $50 oil painting at a Minnesota garage sale.
Now, experts are saying it may be an original Vincent van Gogh.
If it’s the real deal, it could be worth $15 million, according to ARTnews.
The painting, titled “Elimar,” is a portrait of an old fisherman smoking a pipe.
A team of specialists is trying to prove that a canvas bought for less than $50 was painted by Vincent van Gogh—and is worth $15 million. 🔗https://t.co/dkX1P6uwCV pic.twitter.com/mqS6qHKuTE
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 28, 2025
Van Gogh would have painted it in 1889, when he was a self check-in at the Saint-Paul psychiatric sanitarium, where he stayed for just about a year starting that May.
If you were in this woman’s shoes, would you give some of the millions to the person you bought the painting from?
The facility, in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, was where van Gogh would paint several masterpieces, including “The Starry Night,” “Almond Blossom,” and “Irises.”
In 2019, the collector sold the oil painting for an undisclosed sum to LMI Group International, an art research firm, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Over the course of four years, experts collaborated on the painting to determine its authenticity, according to CNN.
“The analysis conducted on this distinctive painting provides fresh insight into the oeuvre of van Gogh, particularly as it relates to his practice of reinterpreting works by other artists,” Maxwell Anderson, Chief Operating Officer of LMI Group, said with respect to the piece, per Artnews.
“This moving likeness embodies van Gogh’s recurring theme of redemption, a concept frequently discussed in his letters and art. Through Elimar, van Gogh creates a form of spiritual self-portrait, allowing viewers to seethe painter as he wished to be remembered.”
The firm has since released a report — hundred of pages long — concluding the painting to be authentic.
“The discovery of a previously unknown van Gogh painting should come as no surprise,” the report read, according to CNN.
“It is well-known that van Gogh lost many works, gave away works to friends and was not particularly careful about any work he considered a study, of which there were many.”
But there’s one more hurdle in determining the painting’s authenticity.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, must approve the work as genuine, according to ARTnews.
Ole Braatelien has written for The Western Journal since 2022. He earned his bachelor’s from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
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