Fields’s disputed drawing is said to depict Vallee. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
In 2010, British businessman Alan Fields said he paid $5 at one in Las Vegas for a handful of framed sketches, ABC News reported in 2012. The authentication board might once have ruled on it and announced its closure in 2011. Fields once told ABC News that the drawing cost him $5 and that he noticed the signature only while framing it at home. Fields said he was told it dates from when Warhol was 11 and ITV News reported that he believes Warhol drew it as a schoolboy in Pittsburgh. Fields claims the piece pushes the origin of pop art back by almost two decades, since pop art is believed to have started when Warhol was 30, according to the Daily Caller. ABC News, in an article in 2012, reported that the piece belonged to an aunt of the seller, who had taken care of Warhol during his childhood. In 2013, ABC News reported that the artist grew up within a few blocks of the seller, according to Fields.
Most garage sales tables hold chipped mugs and old paperbacks. He later concluded that one of them was an early Andy Warhol drawing, potentially worth millions. The drawing depicts the singer, Rudy Vallee, set against a background of brightly coloured one-inch squares. Sources diverge on the origins.
Thus, the $2 million evaluation of the drawing is based on the owners’ assessment, conditional appraisal and a questionable dating of the signature.
Fields managed to contact James Warhol, Warhol’s nephew, who claimed that the drawing was not a genuine one, according to the same report by ITV. The drawing is signed “Andy Warhol” but HuffPost points out that the artist didn’t drop the final “a” from the Warhola until 1949, roughly a decade after the date Fields gives for the drawing. There has been no authentication done by any authentication board regarding the drawing and the foundation claims that there is currently no one authorised to do it.