Attic

The painting felt like a gem discovered in the nick of time. It’s one of those finds that feel like you don’t believe unless you live it. The painting was hidden for so many years. It sat alone in the dark cobwebbed corner of an attic, ignored and unseen for so long it never thought it would see the light of day. A gift from a long forgotten and transplanted friend, it sat unadorned, left to collect cobwebs.

As the attic stairs were pulled from the ceiling as carefully as one opens a precarious can of overfilled soup, the stairs slowly fell to the floor to allow the ascend to the long forgotten attic. The first steps up the ladder were uncertain for the two women and as soon as they found their footing they were already in the small space. The two women began to methodically look through the variety of things that had spent the past two or three decades alone under the small roof of the quaint home. After a long morning and a short coffee break the women came across one frame in the far corner of the crawl space.

The frame looked unassuming and like anything you could acquire easily at any of the usual shops that would carry them. They approached it with little hope as it was in the last corner of the attic they had to look though and they hadn’t found m any items of value to be able to auction off. As the older of the two women lifted the frame steadily and with care as she slowly remembered where this particular piece came into the home from. The frame being heavily dusty and containing a watercolor was slightly dusted off. They shone their flashlights on it the owner of the painting remarked of how fondly she recalls the day she acquired it. They looked at each other in a long pause as the appraiser was eyeing the painting with disbelief. There was no way that she was in fact looking at an original, this couldn’t be what it appeared to be.

Before the appraisal process could begin, they needed to take it in to the living room to clean it off more thoroughly, along with the other handful of items that they collected from the dusty attic. The appraiser felt the excitement of finding something that was truly lost to time and circumstance. A piece of history that was lost due to the innocent lack of knowledge that the owner held. As the appraiser carefully cleaned the framed work, she looked at it closer and was thankful that it was stored in such a dark and dry place face down all this time. The happenstance of the storage afforded the painting never saw sun and therefore retained all of its original shade and subtle shades of color. As soon as the work was dusted off, the appraiser photographed it and sent it off to the leading expert along with the story that accompanied it. As the women made small talk about the art world and what was shifting in the world of collecting, the appraiser nervously checked her phone as often as possible.

Finally, a ping accompanying the confirmation of the art works authenticity and validating the woman’s story, instantly broke through the small talk. The women both stared at the painting together in awe smiling at the gem that could have potentially been thrown away like a baby with the bath water. The owner was downsizing and was all too eager to dispose of any belonging that wasn’t crucial to her. She despised the concept of her two children having to spend their time going through all of her belongings once she passed. She had to do that with her late husband’s mothers’ home and she swore to herself that she would never task her daughters with the same.

The watercolor was a long-lost Andrew Newell Wyeth watercolor of the back yard just beyond the back door 4 feet away, along with home they now stood in. As the appraiser tried to convey the value of what they discovered the woman responded in disbelief that her quirky neighbor couldn’t be that prolific and famous of a painter. To her, he was jus the odd man that lived next door who had always had several family and friends coming in and going. She couldn’t believe that the painting she had her cousin frame with an old simple wooden frame contained a work of art that was worth more than the home that had housed it for decades.

As the women discussed the next steps of how to proceed with insuring or selling the work, the appraiser couldn’t believe that this stunning piece of American history and moving art was almost lost.