In what could be the art find of the year, Pennsylvania antique dealer Heidi Markow reportedly purchased an uncatalogued drawing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir for less than the price of a museum café sandwich. The charcoal sketch—possibly depicting the Impressionist master’s wife Aline Chariot—emerged from a Montgomery County collect auction in January, buried among unremarkable lots.
Markow, proprietor of Salvage Goods Antiques in Easton, PA, initially sensed the significance. “There was an immediacy to the linework,” though she delegated the $12 bidding to her son Carl Paolina while scouting other items. Only later did the pair notice the telltale “Renoir” signature scrawled in pencil and a customs stamp linking it to early 20th-century Philadelphia collector Louis C. Madeira IV.
The discovery sent Markow down an art historical rabbit hole. Months of Renoir documentaries and archival digging preceded consultations with Sotheby’s and a private appraiser, who suggested the attribution might hold. The Wildenstein Plattner Institute—gatekeepers of Renoir’s catalogue raisonné—will render final judgment on April 10.
“I’ve landed enough estate pieces to know when something feels right,” “Arkow stated, cradling the 17.5 x 16.5-inch sketch in acid-free tissue.
Art history isn’t about gut instincts. That’s why we’re handing it over to the scholars.”
“The drawing’s backstory shows a French export stamp on the back of the artwork, Madeira’s stencilled inventory number, and paper stock consistent with Renoir’s late-19th-century studies.
“Provenance is everything,” Wildenstein Plattner researcher Dr Élodie Mercier. “We’ve seen everything from clever forgeries to misattributed workshop pieces. But we also know Renoir gave sketches to friends, dealers, even waiters.”
“If authenticated, the drawing could join Renoir’s intimate portraits of Chariot, whose voluptuous figure famously inspired The Bathers. It rests in a climate-controlled safe, its $12 price tag still dangling from the back.