$50 painting bought at a garage sale turns out to be lost Van Gogh — and is now worth a cool $15 million

Experts in the art segment continue to discover new and interesting things about old paintings and art. In one such discovery, researchers from LMI Group, an art research firm, found out that a painting bought for $50 at a garage sale could actually be an original Van Gogh worth $15 million. The painting was bought by an antiques collector at a garage sale in Minnesota for a price of $50, as per the Wall Street Journal. It is a painting of a fisherman made with oil paints. The 1889 painting titled "Elimar" was attributed to Van Gogh by LMI Group which goes by @lmigroup.intl on Instagram.

The painting was created by the post-impressionist artist during the most challenging final period of his life. "'Elimar' is one of the artist’s many 'translations' of works by other artists. LMI’s multidimensional investigation used both scientific and data-driven methods," the caption to the post by the firm read. "A precise mathematical comparison of the letters 'E L I M A R' to other autograph works by Van Gogh, yielded significant similarities in the letters' characteristics, which in some cases indicated a 94% similarity," the post went on. The organization further added, "'Elimar' contains a partially embedded hair in the surface at the bottom left corner independently verified to be human, male and red."

The materials used for the painting supported that it could be a 19th-century work, including its egg-white temporary finish that Van Gogh was known to use for his paintings at that time to protect his canvases as he rolled them. The painting also showed signs of being rolled. Another post read, "After a four-year investigation led by LMI Group that involved an interdisciplinary team of over fifteen leading experts, LMI Group is introducing Elimar (1889) by Vincent van Gogh. The research combines advanced scientific methods with thorough analysis of archival materials to validate the attribution." The painting is believed to have been created in the psychiatric asylum, Saint-Paul psychiatric sanitarium in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, as per ARTNews.

The artist had checked himself in at the place somewhere between May 1889 to May 1890. The painting depicts a fisherman with a pipe in his mouth looking into the distance. Elimar is considered to be the fisherman's name. The painting was created on an 18 by 16 canvas. The art firm gathered experts from various fields to conduct their research on the painting after they bought the painting from a collector for an unknown amount of money in 2019. The report released by the LMI group explained how the artist revealed that he wanted to be a portraitist through his letters and Elimar was a part of that dream.

The painting is said to have been inspired by Danish artist Michael Ancher's work, as per the report. The artist was considerably popular in Europe during the 1880s and had created a work based on a fisherman Niels Gaihede. He was a much-admired person from Skagen, the Jutland fishing village located towards the north of Denmark. Van Gogh described the painting as a "translation" of the artist's work over "copying" as his aim was to create an improvised interpretation of the artwork.