Woman Might Have Luckily Bought a Renoir at a Flea Market for Fifty Bucks

There are some people, ahem, Steve Martin, who pay handsome sums of money for handsome forgeries of subjectively handsome works of art, and then there are a rare bunch of thrifty art collectors who manage to find genuine art buried under piles of crap at flea markets. This is, in fact, the very stroke of luck that befell a woman in Virginia who, for the low, low price of $50, bought a box of flea market goodies that included a plastic cow, an assuredly creepy doll and what may prove to be a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, of the painterly Renoirs.

The woman took her spoils to a Virginia auction house, which identified the painting as possibly an 1879 job by Renoir called “Paysage Bords de Seine.” If it proves authentic, experts expect the painting to sell for about $100,000.