The owner of an antique shop in Easton, Pennsylvania, is having a drawing she recently bought for just $12 evaluated to see if it’s by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the French impressionist who lived from 1841 to 1919.
The buyer, Heidi Markow, had a hunch that the charcoal drawing of a nude woman she saw at auction was more than it seemed.
“He had a fascination with the female body. … He said that his work wasn’t done until he could pinch it. And when you look at this, it makes sense because it’s so real and so beautiful to detail that you could definitely pinch it,” Ms. Markow, who believes the drawing is of Renoir’s wife, Aline Charigot, told Allentown’s Morning Call.
The paper used for the drawing, the condition of the frame, an importer’s stamp on the back and a faint signature in the drawing led her to think the piece was by Renoir, Ms. Markow told ABC News.
An art appraiser referred to her by the Sotheby’s auction house agreed with Ms. Markow’s hunch. She’s having it examined and possibly authenticated next month by a New York City nonprofit dedicated to art history
“After the Wildenstein Plattner Institute does its inspection, I think it’ll just go back into the safe for a little while and have a little bit of downtime to decide what we would want to do,” Ms. Markow told Philadelphia’s WPVI-TV.
If the piece is by Renoir, its $12 sales price at an auction in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in January is a mere fraction of its market value. It could go for “six or seven figures,” Ms. Markow told ABC.
