In a rare good luck story in hard economic times, a Dutch woman who bought a painting by a little-known avant-garde Russian artist in 1976 for “a few thousand guilders” sold it at auction this week for €5.5 million.
The painting, Still Life with Fruit, a rare work by Ilya Mashkov (1881-1944), was sold at Christie's spring exhibition in London for more than three times its highest pre-auction estimate of €1.75 million – a world record price for the artist.
The oil-on-canvas, measuring 103 by 133.8cm, was painted by Mashkov in 1910, and was described by Christie’s as a “masterpiece” and “the finest example of Russian neo-primitivism to appear at auction in recent history”.
Nobody was more surprised, however, than the seller, who so far remains anonymous.
She and her late husband are believed to have bought the work 37 years ago for “a few thousand guilders”. She hadn’t realised how much it had appreciated until it was valued recently for insurance purposes.
The Dutch guilder was replaced by the euro in January 2002, but 1,000 guilders today would be worth roughly €450.
