The painting hidden behind coats – and may sell for $5 million

A rare painting by Georgia O'Keeffe, hidden for decades behind coats and boxes in a closet of a Manhattan apartment, has been rediscovered and is expected to sell at auction for $3 to $5 million. The 1930 work was purchased in 1963 for $3,800.

A rare painting by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, hidden for decades behind coats and boxes in a closet of a Manhattan apartment in New York, has been rediscovered and is expected to sell at auction for $3 to $5 million, according to a report by the Associated Press. The work, painted in 1930, depicts the mountainous landscape of Lobo Peak in New Mexico and is considered one of O'Keeffe's early works inspired by the American Southwest. For many years, the painting's whereabouts were unknown, with only a 1931 photograph attesting to its existence. Behind the surprising discovery is a woman from New York, who held the painting for decades without her family knowing. According to Christie's auction house, the painting was purchased in 1963 at a New York gallery for just $3,800 by a woman who later gave it to her daughter. For years, the painting hung in the woman's apartment in the East Village, until in the mid-1980s she decided to remove it from the wall and return it to its original packing crate. Around 2022, the woman first told her niece about the painting hidden in the entryway closet, but only this year, while tidying the apartment, was the painting taken out of the crate.