A cryptic, somber painting of 10 scattered seashells — purchased by a collector for $30 at an estate sale this summer — sold for $1.35 million on Thursday at Freeman’s auction house.
The work, “Alderman Merriam’s Shells,” was created in 1951 by Gertrude Abercrombie, a Surrealist painter based in Chicago who died in 1977.
The painting was discovered in July when a man, nosing around at an estate sale in Kalamazoo, Mich., stumbled upon the enigmatic painting on the wall of a dimly lit corridor leading to the garage. The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, was familiar with Abercrombie’s work and was stunned to see the still life bearing the painter’s distinct signature.
Zachary Wirsum, a senior vice president at Freeman’s, said the man told him he “was shaking as he walked out to his car,” with his discovery.
“I think, objectively, had he not purchased it, this would have just ended up in the dumpster,” Mr. Wirsum added. “So I think that he saved it from forever being lost in time.”
The compositions of Abercrombie have experienced a revival in interest over the last decade, including two recent shows at the Milwaukee Museum of Art. Those shows displayed her characteristic dreamscapes, often inhabited with the odd, the eerie and the inexplicable: melancholy cats leashed to yards of string, grim figures with sweeps of hair pinned to walls, bare-limbed trees, floating doorways and, of course, seashells.
Missing from those exhibits was “Alderman,” an oil painting on a Masonite board no bigger than a sheet of letter-size paper that depicts a group of seashells, each seemingly aglow from an elusive off-frame light.
The painting, and the home it was found in, belonged to Dr. John Reynolds, a physician. He received the artwork from Abercrombie in the 1950s as payment-in-kind for medical care, according to Susan Weininger, an art historian at Roosevelt University in Chicago who verified the work’s authenticity for the auction house.
After a mild restoration, “Alderman” went on the block last week. Rigorous bidding among two collectors ensued, Mr. Wirsum said. A private collector in the San Francisco Bay Area won.
Dr. Weininger said in an interview that she began cataloging Abercrombie’s works in the late 1970s and early ’80s and had spoken directly with Dr. Reynolds around that time. “Alderman” was last seen in public at an exhibit in Chicago in 1953, during a period when Abercrombie’s fixation with seashells began. Dr. Weininger said she often depicted the objects with tiny, jagged punctures. In later works, shells appear solo, in trios, and alongside the most random of artifacts — keys, ribbons, leaves, dice. One portrays a woman emerging from the hollow body, like a snail.
The painting’s titular “Alderman” is a nod to Robert Merriam, who in the late 1940s to mid 1950s represented the Chicago City Council ward where Abercrombie lived for most of her life. Abercrombie was known for puttering about in a beat up Rolls-Royce, wearing conical black hats and hosting salons graced by jazz icons like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Sarah Vaughan.
Dr. Weininger said that although she was “shocked” by the gavel price for “Alderman,” she was pleased that it reflected Abercrombie’s rising stature. She noted that this particular painting transformed the mundane into something “atmospheric,” she said.
“It has her wittiness and mystery about it,” she added, pointing out how one of the shells seems to float in a black void, as if pinned to nothing at all.
The price paid at auction was the highest to date for any of her works. The previous record was set last year at Sotheby’s, where “Message for Mercy,” so named after one of her cats, sold for $1.02 million; it features a black feline lounging in a barren room paying no mind to an envelope that has been slipped under a door. Earlier works by Abercrombie have typically sold in the five to six-digit range.
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