Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 11, 1991 TAG: 9103110092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
The unidentified buyer, a man wearing a business suit and sunglasses, left through a side door after offering the highest price in an auction that lasted just four minutes.
Four others bidders competed for the 16 1/4 -by-13-inch painting, titled "Still Life with Flowers," at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in downtown Chicago.
The painting is a dark still life with bright scarlet flowers. The painting, believed to have been completed in 1886 and signed only with a "V" in the lefthand corner, is a minor work, according to art experts.
Bidding started at $500,000 and quickly exceeded Hindman's most optimistic prediction of $800,000. Hindman said later she was "not terribly surprised, but pleased" with the final price.
The buyer cast a $1.3 million bid and will pay an additional $130,000 sales commission, for a total of $1.43 million, Hindman said.
"He's a very refined, private and dignified man," Hindman said of the winning bidder, a private collector. "He really liked the painting and he really wanted it."
The work was discovered last July on the living room wall of a suburban Milwaukee couple by real estate agent John Kuhn, working as an art prospector for Hindman.
The couple had owned the painting since 1955, when they inherited the piece from a Swiss banker and art collector who bought the piece between 1910 and 1930 in Zurich or Paris. The couple had thought it was a van Gogh reproduction, Kuhn said.
Van Gogh, who had painted in very dark colors while in his homeland, began lightening his palette after arriving in Paris in 1886, according to art experts.
Experts at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam later confirmed the authenticity of the work, painted by the Dutch artist in 1886.
"Because of this discovery, there are hundreds of people who think they have something really valuable," Hindman said.
About 600 people attended the auction, many just to see the van Gogh sold. "It happened so fast it made your head spin," said spectator George Shorney.
Competition for the painting was lively until someone hooked up by telephone to the auction room offered $1.2 million.
The man in the business suit and sunglasses cast the $1.3 million bid. When Hindman hammered the gavel, the buyer quickly left the room from his third-row seat.
Kuhn said he spoke with the Milwaukee couple moments after the sale and that they were happy with the price. He said the couple also wished to remain anonymous.
"They were very, very happy," said Kuhn. "They were expecting nothing. It was like winning a lottery ticket and someone just had to fill in the price."
The auction house also sold a 1917 painting by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani titled "Jeune Femme Brune." The work went for $500,000, on the low end of what auctioneers had projected.
by CNB