An Art Dealer Bought This Painting at a Barn Sale for $50. It Turned Out to Be an Emily Carr Worth Nearly $150,000

An artwork purchased for $50 has been identified as an original painting by Canadian artist Emily Carr. Next month, the piece will go to the auction block, where it’s expected to fetch some $147,000.

The painting was discovered by the New York art dealer Allen Treibitz, who bought it at a summer barn sale in the Hamptons earlier this year.

“You could just tell that painting had something special about it,” he tells Global News’ Amy Judd and Emily Lazatin. “It definitely had a look, and it was definitely very interesting.”

Carr signed the cool-toned painting and dated it 1912. After purchasing the piece, Treibitz researched the artist and started thinking he’d gotten far more than his money’s worth. He took it to Heffel Fine Art Auction House in Canada for advice.

“There was no doubt in my mind that this was an exciting Cinderella discovery,” David Heffel, the auction house’s president, tells the Canadian Press’ Alex Goudge.

Experts confirmed the piece had been created by Carr, a Post-Impressionist landscape painter with a “uniquely modern vision of the British Columbia landscape” that became “associated with the articulation of Canada’s national identity in the early 20th century,” per the Art Canada Institute. Titled Masset, QCI, the 16- by 13-inch artwork depicts a totem pole topped with a carved bear.

Early in her career, Carr’s “modern Parisian Post-Impressionist style”—owed to a year of art school in Paris—was “not well received locally,” art historian Gerta Moray tells the Canadian Press. “She could not then find a destination for it, either with the provincial museum or getting any number of public purchases.”

But Carr rose to prominence in 1927, when her paintings were shown at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa as part of an exhibition of Canadian West Coast art. In the 1930s, her evocative landscapes were displayed in London and New York.

The Indigenous memorial post depicted in Masset, QCI once stood in the village of Masset in the Haida Gwaii archipelago, a group of islands off British Columbia’s Pacific coast. Carr was known for her depictions of the iconography of First Nations groups alongside sweeping Canadian landscapes—exemplified by works like Big Raven, one of her better-known pieces.

Carr likely gave Masset, QCI to her friend Nell Cozier in the 1930s, per the Canadian Press. It had probably been hanging in a barn in the Hamptons since Cozier moved there from Victoria, British Columbia. As Hoffel says, “It needed a good cleaning and freshening up.”

Before heading to auction, the painting will be exhibited at Heffel galleries in cities across Canada, including Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

“Cinderella stories like Allen’s Emily Carr remind people that important treasures are still out there, waiting to be found,” Heffel tells the Art Newspaper’s Larry Humber. “It’s rare to come across an artwork that has been hidden away for so long, and it’s one of the reasons why our business is so joyful—it’s not just about the value of the piece, but the thrill of unveiling history and sharing that wonder with the world.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.