Take a look at this WaPo article:
“A ‘lost’ landscape thought to have been painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir will go on the auction block Sept. 29 on behalf of the Baltimore-born woman who purchased the artwork at a West Virginia flea market for $7. ‘Paysage Bords de Seine,’ a 6-inch by 10-inch canvas dating from about 1879, is expected to fetch $75,000 to $100,000, according to … the Alexandria, Va., auction house overseeing the sale. She said that it’s one of several depictions of the river Seine that the French Impressionist master created near the towns of Bougival and Chatou.
“The Virginia-based buyer, who prefers to remain anonymous, purchased a box of odds and ends at a flea market just across the West Virginia state line and near her home in the Shenandoah Valley in late 2010 or early 2011. She didn’t much care for the painting and said she would never have bid on it if the other stuff in the box hadn’t caught her eye.
“There was a plastic cow that grabbed me, and a Paul Bunyan doll,” said the woman, who lived in Baltimore until she was 4 years old. “And I liked the frame. It was gold and ornate. I thought I could use it for something else if I cut out the painting.”
- Mary McCauley of the Washington Post
And here’s the assumed Renoir:
I don’t think I would even have bought it FOR the frame. But a PLASTIC COW! That should have been worth something!
