An art dealer bought this painting at a barn sale for $50. It turned out to be an Emily Carr worth almost $150,000

An artwork purchased for $50 has been identified as an original painting by a Canadian artist Emily Carr. The piece heads to the auction block next month, where it is expected to fetch around $147,000.

The painting was discovered by New York art dealer Allen Treibitz, who bought it earlier this year at a summer auction in the Hamptons.

“You could just see that there was something special about painting,” he says Global newsAmy Judd and Emily Lazatin. “It certainly looked and it was definitely very interesting.”

Carr signed the cool-toned painting and dated it 1912. After purchasing the piece, Treibitz researched the artist and began to think he had gotten much more than his money’s worth. He brought it to Heffel Art Auction House in Canada for advice.

“I had no doubt that this was an exciting Cinderella discovery,” said David Heffel, chairman of the auction house. Canadian Press‘Alex Goudge.

Experts confirmed the piece was created by Carr, a post-Impressionist landscape painter with a “uniquely modern vision of British Columbia’s landscape” who “became associated with the articulation of Canada’s national identity in the early 20th century,” according to the author. Art Canada Institute. Titled Masset, QCIThe 16 by 13 inch artwork shows a totem pole with a carved bear on top.

Early in her career, Carr’s ‘modern Parisian post-impressionist style’ – thanks to a year at art school in Paris – was ‘not well received locally’, according to art historian. Gerta Moray tells the Canadian Press. “She could not find a use for it at the time, either at the provincial museum or in obtaining a number of public purchases.”

But Carr came to prominence in 1927, when her paintings were shown in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa as part of a exhibition of Canadian west coast art. In the 1930s her evocative landscapes displayed in London and New York.

The indigenous memorial post depicted in Masset, QCI once stood in the village of Masset in the Haida Gwaii Archipelagoa group of islands off the Pacific coast of British Columbia. Carr was known for her depictions of the iconography of First Nations groups alongside sweeping Canadian landscapes, illustrated by works such as Great Ravenone of her better known pieces.

Carr probably gave it Masset, QCI to her friend Nell Cozier in the 1930s, according to the Canadian Press. It was probably hanging in a barn in the Hamptons since Cozier moved there from Victoria, British Columbia. As Hoffel says, “It needed a good cleaning and freshening.”

Before going to auction, the painting will be exhibited at Heffel galleries in cities across Canada, including Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

“Cinderella stories like Allen’s Emily Carr remind people that important treasures still exist, waiting to be found,” Heffel told the paper. Art newspaper‘s Larry Humber. “It’s rare to come across a work of art that has been hidden for so long, and it’s one of the reasons our company is so happy: it’s not just about the value of the piece, but the thrill of revealing the history and sharing that wonder with the world.”