A stroke of good luck does not happen to everyone, but when it does happen, it is sometimes one of that could change your life.
And this is what happened to Jared Whipple, a mechanic, who in September 2017 received a call from a friend of his who informed him that he had found some painted canvases in an abandoned barn in Watertown, Connecticut.
Whipple’s friend had contacted him because he knew of the mechanic’s passion for antiques and also because some of the subjects of these painting looked like spare parts for cars or some sort of machine. At the time, it was still unclear who the painter was and how much they were worth.
Whipple found the large canvases ready to be thrown into the landfill – there was debris and mold on some of them, but luckily they were all individually wrapped in plastic.
When the mechanic started unwrapping them, he realized that there was a chance he was in front of some very valuable works of art. It took fouryears to discover the painter of these canvases and understand their relevance, but in the end Whipple found out. These works were painted by Francis Mattson Hines, an artist who had known great, brief, success in the 1980s in New York, but was soon forgotten after his disappearance in 2016. That’s why Whipple couldn’t immediately find the necessary information about the art on the internet.
But how much are the paintings found by Whipple worth? Art curator and historian Peter Hastings Falk has estimated that Hines’ drawings could reach a price of $ 4,500 dollars each, while the paintings could reach $ 22,000 dollars each. This means that the entire collection Whipple unearthed could potentially be worth several million dollars!
“Not only was this artist an important figure, but he was also better known in the New York art world than we could ever have imagined,” said Whipple. This chance discovery changed the life of the mechanic who suddenly found himself acting as an art dealer. His purpose, he argues, is to “put Hines back into books about the history of art”.
What can we say? Pleasant surprises can lurk anywhere, even in the garbage. If you are passionate about vintage items and are always looking for interesting flea markets, we are sure that you will have the expert eye to recognize a real deal like the one that fell into Whipple’s lap!
