A Minnesota man (who has requested to stay anonymous) tells the NY Post that "It was in 2019 I was just browsing a yard sale and probably wasn't going to buy anything. Then I saw this painting and I just thought it looked cool. It was 75 bucks which seemed a bit high to me. So I asked what about 50 for this. I guess they had missed out on a few sales or something because they quickly said yes. I still felt a little crazy buying this for $50 but I thought well it looks like a real painting and 50 is about what you'd pay for a cool print at World Market or something."
At a gathering at his house last year a man who works in the art industry told him this appears to be a genuine painting from the 1800's and the talent it took to paint this makes it a very valuable piece. "We couldn't read the name written on it so we didn't have a way of looking up the artist."
They took it to a professional appraiser who shocked them by saying this appeared to him to be a van Gough although he couldn't be sure. They then flew it to NY and had a team of 20 assess it. The team came from fields including chemistry, art and patent law — joined forces for the New York-based art research firm LMI Group. They matched the red paint to other van Goughs. The name scrawled at the bottom is Elimar who they believe is the name van Gough gave this subject. They dated it to 1889 the year before van Gough died. They now expect it to be sold for around 15 million.
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