Second hand stores and markets can be treasure troves for valuable artwork.
A few years ago, a man purchased a sketch for a small sum at the Humanity for Humanity Restore, a second hand shop in Queens, New York, and recently discovered it was an authentic Egon Schiele drawing. The discovered drawing depicts a nude woman reclining down, strongly outlined in dark pencil.
Egon Schiele was an early 20th century Austrian artist who showed talent from an early age and was mentored by the great Gustav Klimt. His corpus consisted of portraits and self portraits often nude and in contorted, erotic positions, as well as landscapes.
In June 2018, the buyer, who wanted to remain anonymous, reached out to Jane Kallir, the director of the Galerie St. Etienne in Manhattan and the world's foremost expert on Egon Schiele. He sent a blurry image of the drawing, but Kallir asked for better images to truly evaluate the authenticity of the work. It took a year before the man sent better photographs of the drawing and upon seeing them, Kallir was struck at the resemblance with other Schiele works. Once she saw them in person, she was confident in its artistic provenance.
“If you look at the way this girl is lying on her back, and you look at the foreshortening both on the rib cage and on her face, and the way you see that little nose pointing up—think about how difficult that is to do,” Kallir told the Art Newspaper. “There are very few people in the history of art who can draw like that.”
According to Kallir, Schiele made about 20 drawings of this girl and her mother in 1918 before he died because of Spanish fever at the age of 28 later that year, and this sketch likely dates to those modeling sessions. Other similar drawings of this girl are at the Met and the Leopold Museum in Vienna.
The St. Etienne Gallery is currently exhibiting the drawing in their show "The Art Dealer as Scholar" with an estimated value of $100,000-200,000. Kallir states that part of the proceeds from the work will go to charity for Habitat for Humanity New York City, a non-profit organization that is committed to giving poorer communities decent housing.