A retirement party got the shock of his life when he learned that the drawing, found by accident, was bought for only $30. The story of the man who, thanks to this unwittingly made the purchase, owned a work of art valued at $50 million baffled everyone who heard it.
Imagine buying a small picture for $30 with a household resolution. Then it turns out: It comes from Dürer and is worth millions.
Perhaps Clifford Schorer would never have seen the 500-year-old masterpiece that changed his life if he hadn’t been late for a party to celebrate his friend’s retirement.
In the 2019 incident, Schorer found that he had forgotten to take the gift he was going to give to the party he was late for. While searching the internet, the man found a man named Brainerd Phillipson who was selling rare books in his house. Clifford Schorer, who bought a present there, said: “Do you understand art?” He answered yes because he was previously director of the Worcester Art Museum.
The man asked Schorer if one of his friends had a drawing by the famous German painter Albrecht Dürer and that he wanted to buy this drawing. Schorer was skeptical because it was thought that the famous painter did not have drawings by an unknown and individual person.
Works by Albrecht Dürer are rarely sold and cannot even be found with collectors. The artist’s last sold works were auctioned off by the famous auction house Sotheby’s in 1978 and sold for $300,000 million.
In this case, Schorer thought that at best it would be an engraving (hand-carved work). He went to the man whose identity is still hidden to see the work and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When he saw Adam Schorer’s surprise, he asked what had happened and replied, “This is either a masterpiece or the greatest art fraud in the world.”
The man who collects used things and then sells them told Schorer that he bought the drawing at a flea market for $ 30 in 2016. Nobody knew that this $ 30 drawing was actually worth millions of dollars.
Clifford Schorer immediately bought the drawing for $100,000 without negotiating with the man. I was actually gambling; Schorer said that if the drawing wasn’t original the $100,000 I spent would have been wasted, but I was very excited and Schorer immediately flew the work to London and placed it in the hands of world-renowned art expert Jane McAusland.
After weeks of research, it turned out that the work was an original drawing by Albrecht Dürer from the 16th century. Schorer had the shock of his life when it became known that “The Virgin and Child with a Flower on a Grassy Bank” was worth 50 million.
The work has been visiting world-famous galleries, particularly in Vienna and London, since 2019 and continues to be exhibited there. In a statement to the US press, Schorer said he was considering selling the work after the exhibition had been on for some time. The happy entrepreneur, who is almost certain to get very rich in the future with this record price and sale, said that he wanted to buy the drawing from a famous collector and give it to a large museum so that he had always wanted to visit it.
The German painter Albrecht Dürer, who lived between 1471 and 1528, Dürer lived in the transitional period between the late Middle Ages and the early modern era.
And is one of the most important figures of old editions alongside Rembrant and Goya. As one of the greatest names of the German Renaissance, Dürer is one of the most famous artists in the world.
The new image of the Renaissance man took center stage in literature, architecture, painting, and sculpture. Dürer’s work reflected these great developments of the time.
Sources: Westernjournal, Americanpost, Newsbeezer, Dw
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