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Art Found in Unexpected Places

With the recent discovery of a lost painting by Edgar Degas on a public bus, people are in awe of how famous art can be lost and then found. Often the places where they are discovered are inconspicuous and over looked. The fact that the French police found  The Chorus Singers by the Impressionist painter eight years after it went missing, is astounding. It was being transported inside of a piece of luggage that none of the passengers claimed as their own. The painting had gone missing in 2009 and the authorities were delighted to recover it finally.

In January of 2018 a Rembrandt was found in a New Jersey home. Two brothers inherited their mother’s home and found the painting buried in the basement. At first they had no idea what it was worth, but once it was revealed to be an authentic Rembrandt piece it sold at auction for 1.1 million dollars. The piece, which was called The Unconscious Patient (An Allegory of the Sense of Smell) was one of his earliest signed works and part of a series he created depicting the five senses. It was found in such poor condition that they originally assumed it was an unremarkable reproduction and were shocked to find out it was the real thing.

Discovered in the attic of a home in Toulouse, France, a lost piece of art by the Italian master Carvaggio was carefully examined before being declared authentic in 2016. This piece depicts Judith Beheading Holofernes and is very gruesome to look at, but shows the same techniques that Carvaggio was known for. Test performed on it included infrared reflectography and X-rays, performed by top experts on the artist. The unlikely location it was found in divided the art community in believing it was real and there are still those skeptical of it today.

Old masterpieces are not the only ones to be found hidden away from the world.  Jackson Pollack, a famous painter in the modern art movement had a piece that was found in a home in Arizona. The abstract piece showed all the signs of being a Pollack piece, created during the 1940’s, although how it got from New York to the Southwest was a mystery that needed to be unraveled. Turns out, the connection was a socialite family member who ran in the same circles as the artist during that time period. This newly found piece is estimated to be worth up to 15 million dollars.

Although art can often be found in the most unexpected places, not every house will be home to a lost masterpiece. For the rest of us, we can bring the same beauty of hand painted art into our home with Overstockart.com’s high quality pieces. Take a moment to look through our galleries and discover the piece that was meant to be in your home.