A painting bought for just $30 at a Michigan estate sale has sold for $1,352,600 at auction in New York, after experts identified it as a long-lost 1951 work by Chicago Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie. The painting, Alderman Merriam’s Shells, had been missing from public view for about 75 years before it resurfaced this summer. It ultimately set a new world auction record for Abercrombie at Freeman’s Post-War & Contemporary Art sale on October 1.
The result was dramatically higher than the painting’s presale estimate of $150,000 to $250,000. It opened at $80,000, with five telephone bidders and several online bidders competing for the work. Freeman’s said the final $1,352,600 figure includes the buyer’s premium; the hammer price was $1.06 million. The result made it the first Abercrombie work to cross the $1 million mark at auction. The 2026 Milwaukee exhibition was described by the museum as the most comprehensive presentation of Abercrombie’s work ever organised.
Because it appears to show Abercrombie painting directly from physical objects rather than simply inventing them from memory, the work is particularly significant.
The painting provides evidence that the shells seen in some of her later solitary shell compositions were rooted in observation, according to Freeman’s. It was co-organised by Carnegie Museum of Art and Colby College Museum of Art and explored the artist’s distinctive combination of dreamlike imagery, personal symbolism and Midwestern settings.
Freeman’s said the October 1 sale achieved $3,449,560 overall, with an 88% sell-through rate by lot and participation from buyers in 12 countries. The auction house also reported that 23% of its buyers in the sale were new to the firm. Earlier reporting noted: Painted by Gertrude Abercrombie, a Chicago Surrealist artist, the painting Alderman Merriam’s Shells had been missing from public view for 75 years.
As happy as we are to have recaptured the record sale price for an artist we have long championed, we are even happier for our eagle-eyed consignor who saved this masterpiece from staying forever lost to time.
Earlier reporting noted: “A rare instance of the artist painting directly from life, it confirms that the shell motif in her later solitary shell paintings, long presumed invented, was drawn from observation and memory,” the auction house said in a release. The Abercrombie shooting the moon was obviously the high point of the day, but the rest of the sale shone bright, with great results across the board to add to the magic of the day,” said Zack Wirsum, Senior Vice President, Head of Department, Post War & Contemporary Art, speaking about the sale. The rediscovery also comes amid a broader reassessment of Abercrombie’s market. The painting’s final price at Freeman’s was more than five times its high estimate and surpassed the previous auction record for the artist. The work depicts nine finely rendered seashells on a slate-grey surface, with a single conical shell suspended by a thread against a black wall, appearing to levitate above the rest. The shells were real, and so was their owner. Robert Merriam was alderman of Hyde Park, the Chicago neighbourhood where Abercrombie lived and worked. Hence the title. I love it when good things happen to good people and when the story unfolds in reality just as we wrote it.
Earlier reporting noted: “No fairytale would be complete without a storybook ending, and Gertrude Abercrombie’s Alderman Merriam’s Shells selling for a new auction record is as happily ever after as it gets.