FROM CASTOFF TO TREASURE, GOODWILL DONATION IS A CORTES PAINTING THAT FETCHES $40,000

AVV 6-26 #744208

EASTON, MD. (AP) — An old painting dropped off at a rural Maryland Goodwill store along with used coffee makers and clock radios this spring was pulled aside by sharp-eyed store employees. It was a lucky save.

Goodwill later discovered the piece was the work of a noted French Impressionist and sold the Parisian street scene at auction for $40,600 — well above the $20 to $100 Goodwill managers say it likely would have sold for if employees hadn’t picked it out.

The picture — called “Marche aux fleurs’’ or “Flower Market’’ by Edouard Leon Cortes — was left at the Goodwill in Easton, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, sometime in March.

“It could have very easily ended up put in a pile, marked for $20,’’ says Ursula Villar, marketing and development director for Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake Inc.

Employees told The (Baltimore) Sun that treasure finds at Goodwill are common, but usually they surface after a savvy shopper takes them home. This time Goodwill will keep the profit for its charity work.

The donor is out of luck. Even if someone came forward and could prove they donated the picture, Goodwill donations are considered legal — and final — transactions.

“We just lucked upon an opportunity to increase our ability to give back,’’ says store manager Terri Tonelli.

Tonelli says she returned from a vacation in March to store employees asking her to look at a donated painting they suspected was valuable. Tonelli agreed the picture of a rainy Paris street appeared genuine, not a print, and Googled the artist’s name.

Tonelli discovered that Cortes was a notable French Impressionist whose work had sold at auction for prices near $60,000. The painting was likely done in the early Twentieth Century, when Cortes started Paris street scenes for which he’s known.

“The hair on the back of my neck was standing up by then,’’ Tonelli says.

Tonelli shipped the painting to a larger Goodwill office in Baltimore, which had it examined by local art experts. When artists determined the painting may be genuine, Goodwill managers then shipped it to Sotheby’s auction house in New York, where the painting was cleaned and appraised.

After Sotheby’s determined the painting was authentic, and had not been reported stolen, the “Flower Market’’ picture was auctioned recently for $40,600. Sotheby’s does not identify winning bidders.

An art gallery owner in New York who bid on the painting but lost the auction told the newspaper that Cortes pieces are growing in value.

“He was always appreciated as an artist, but now people are beginning to see the importance he had,’’ said Howard Rehs, co-owner of Rehs Galleries Inc, which has ten other Cortes paintings.