In many respects, finding an artistic masterpiece at a thrift store is akin to winning the lottery. Seldom does it ever happen, but it does indeed happen from time to time — from a Yoshitomo Nara ashtray being sold at a Goodwill to an original Picasso ceramic being scooped up at The Salvation Army. There’s more gold out there to be found in plain sight. Case in point: a Barcelona shopper spotted a pastel drawing labeled as a “fake” work by the French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas on an online auction site in 2021.
The work had a starting price of €1 EUR, in which the undisclosed buyer — certain that it was an original, won by paying the equivalent of $1,000 USD. Measuring 19 x 24.5 inches and created with pastel on cardboard, the drawing belonged to a Catalonian seller who inherited the piece from his ancestor Joan Llonch Salas in 1940. The Salas’ were weary of the Degas signature in the bottom right corner, but dismissed it as nothing more than a knockoff. With the help of Michel Schulman, an expert who’s helped authenticate 1,750 works by Degas, the overlooked pastel drawing has been verified as the French artist’s Éloge du maquillage (In praise of cosmetics), a brothel scene created in 1876 that had gone missing over the past few decades.
Schulman told El Pais that his team used “an exhaustive analysis of pigments, a meticulous study carried out with X-rays and photographs, among other techniques,” to come to their conclusion and we’re aided by a unique label on the back of the drawing that dates back to the Spanish Civil War. According to Schulman, the label verifies the trail in which the drawing was repatriated back to Spain. It was first sold by Degas to artist Julián Bastinos in 1887, who took it to Cairo where it was framed in 1910. Following Julián’s death eight years later, the work was sent back to Spain by Julián’s brother, until it was confiscated by Francoist forces in the 30’s who returned it in 1940, eventually being sold off to the Salas’ in the same year.
Experts now believe the drawing’s worth can reach up to $13m USD when it reappears at auction houses.
