24th September 2026 – (United States) A painting picked up for $30 at a Michigan estate sale has been identified as a long‑missing work by Chicago surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie and is now set for sale in New York with an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000. Freeman’s will offer Alderman Merriam’s Shells (1951) in its Post‑War and Contemporary Art auction on 1st October after authentication by experts confirmed the canvas as an original. News of the rediscovery first spread after the buyer noticed Abercrombie’s signature and sought advice, with the auction house later announcing the work’s return to market.
The twist came when the purchaser, on a family trip to Milwaukee, visited the touring exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery and spotted an archival image of the very painting in the catalogue, prompting formal verification and consignment to Freeman’s. The show, which reached the Milwaukee Art Museum earlier this year, has helped revive interest in Abercrombie’s oeuvre and illuminated the whereabouts of works thought lost.
Painted during a prolific period for the artist, Alderman Merriam’s Shells arranges nine seashells against a stark, slate‑grey and black field, with one conical shell suspended as if floating. The subject references the collection of Robert Merriam, a Chicago alderman whose Hyde Park ward overlapped with Abercrombie’s milieu. Archival notes indicate the artist later gave the painting to Dr John Reynolds in early 1952 as payment for a medical procedure, before it disappeared into private hands for decades.