Artwork purchased online for $1,000 identified as long-lost Degas worth $13 million

A savvy online scavenger landed the deal of a lifetime when he spotted a pastel drawing listed as a 'fake' Degas in 2021. The surprisingly masterful composition caught the punter's eye and, with the help of expert Michel Schulman, they determined it was the best deal. likely Praise of makeup (1876), a famous brothel scene painted by Degas and recorded as missing for several decades.

This dramatic story was revealed on May 28, when the painting was presented to the public at the French Institute in Madrid. This was first reported by the Catelan daily. El Punt Avui.

According to the report, an anonymous buyer from Barcelona got into a bidding war on the Todocolección auction site. Initially offered for just €1, he won the work for €926 ($1,000). At the time, this must have seemed a godsend to the former owner, originally from Sabadell in Catalonia, who had inherited the painting. Although it bears the signature “Degàs”, he did not believe it could be authentic and therefore listed the work with some provenance documents showing that it had been purchased in 1940 by his ancestor Joan Llonch Salas, collector and former president of the local Banco. Sabadell.

Now that it has been attributed to Degas, some experts suggest that the impressionist pastel on cardboard, measuring approximately 19 inches by 24.5 inches, could be worth around 7 or 8 million euros (about $8 million). Other estimates put it at 12 million euros ($13 million), according to El National.

So what is the story behind this long-lost work of art? Schulman, author of Degas's online catalog raisonné, set out on a mission to find out with the help of art historians Judith Urbano and Álvaro Pascual, and consultant Juan Arjona Rey of Consultores Rey.

The team came to the conclusion that it was a Degas “after an exhaustive analysis of the pigments, a careful study carried out with X-rays and photographs, among other techniques,” Schulman told the Spanish newspaper. El País. The analysis, carried out in Madrid in July 2023, dated the work to the end of the 19th century. He said it was also important to check that the signature on the work was embedded and had not been added later.

Schulman, who cataloged 1,750 works by Degas, further suggested that Praise of makeup was linked to another work by the French painter, The serious customer. “Degas worked in his paintings from a scene or character from another earlier work,” explained Schulman.

The authentication team's research was facilitated by several labels still stuck to the back of the work, which helped prove that the work entered Spain while in the possession of the artist Julián Bastinos , who bought it from Degas in Paris in 1887 for 3,000 francs. . This transaction is recorded in a letter that Degas sent to his friend the opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure.

Bastinos took it with him to Cairo in the 1910s, a stay referenced by a label on the back of the work indicating that it was framed in Egypt. After Julián's death in 1918, the pastel was repatriated to Barcelona by his brother Antonio J. Bastinos.

In 1934, the work was reportedly one of 150 works in the Bastinos family collection, including an oil painting by Goya, confiscated by authorities. They were stored by the Franco republicans in the Pedralbes monastery for safekeeping during the Spanish Civil War.

A label on the back from the Francoist Ministry of National Education indicates that the pastel was “recovered from the enemy” in January 1939. Researchers say it was returned to the Bastinos family in 1940 and sold shortly after in Llonch on September 13, 1940. for 3,000 pesetas.

The work was last seen in public in 1952 when Joan Llonch Salas lent it to a group exhibition at the Gaspar Gallery in Barcelona, ​​as another label on the back of the work indicates. A monotype on paper of the same subject, a red-haired woman depicted in profile and powdering herself, is preserved in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Praise of makeup is now listed in Schulman's digital catalog raisonné.

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