A New York woman hid a $3,800 Georgia O’Keeffe in her closet for 40 years and only told her niece before she died, and now it could sell for millions

A Georgia O’Keeffe painting that spent roughly 40 years in a New York City closet is heading to auction at Christie’s, according to BroBible. The work is titled Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, dates to 1930, and measures about 10 by 24 inches. Christie’s has scheduled the sale for November 17, and the painting is expected to bring in millions of dollars.

The painting belonged to the aunt of the woman who discovered it, who received the piece as a graduation gift for her master’s degree in the 1960s. It was bought for $3,800 at the time. She displayed it for years, then boxed it up around the mid 1980s after noticing that someone at a bridge game kept looking at it a little too closely.

The aunt reportedly told her niece, “Oh, by the way, there’s a Georgia O’Keeffe in the closet,” and the niece first heard about the painting in 2022. She did not see it until a few weeks ago. The aunt, who has since died, had a long Foreign Service career and was a highly ranked bridge player who lived in an East Village apartment, according to the auction house.

Christie’s says an old photograph and a signature shaped like a star helped confirm the discovery

Christie’s identified the work through a single 1931 photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and gallerist who was married to O’Keeffe, along with the star shaped signature the artist placed on the back of the canvas. Those details tied the painting to her known body of work and helped the auction house treat the closet discovery as an authentic Georgia O’Keeffe painting.

The painting is on view for free at Christie’s Rockefeller Center location from November 7 through November 17, which gives the public a chance to see the Georgia O’Keeffe painting before the sale. Tylee Abbott, who leads American art at Christie’s, has called the work a wonderful painting and a remarkable story.

Reports on the expected price have varied. Some coverage of the sale puts the estimate at around $3 million, while other coverage places it between $3 million and $5 million. An estimate, however, is only a starting point at auction, and the final figure will be set by the bidders who compete for the Georgia O’Keeffe painting on November 17.

The title places the work near Abiquiu, a small northern New Mexico community where O’Keeffe later owned a home. She became closely associated with the landscape of that region, and the 1930 date puts the painting in the early years after she first traveled to New Mexico in 1929.

Surprise finds of this kind have reached auction houses before, and a Perugino painting found in a garage in Oxfordshire sold for £685,000. The Georgia O’Keeffe painting arrives at Christie’s with a similar backstory, however, as it is a work that spent years out of public view before specialists took a closer look at it.

The gap between the purchase price and the expected result is wide. The painting cost $3,800 in the 1960s, and Christie’s now expects it to sell for millions of dollars. It also spent about 40 years out of public view, from the mid 1980s until its recent discovery in a closet, according to the account shared by the auction house.

The Georgia O’Keeffe painting goes to auction at Christie’s on November 17, and the final price will show whether bidders push it past the estimates that have circulated so far.