Edinburgh artist’s masterpiece “lost” in New York 60 years ago sells for £189,000

A portrait by Edinburgh Colourist artist F.C.B. Cadell has sold at auction for £189,200, 60 years after it was “lost” in a New York charity shop.

Cadell’s Interior: The Lady in Black went under the hammer at Lyon & Turnbull’s Scottish Paintings & Sculpture auction last night in Edinburgh. The overall total for the fine art auctioneer’s sale, one of two such auctions held each year, was £1.78m.

The Edinburgh-born artist painted this striking painting of a young woman, identified by Lyon & Turnbull’s Senior Specialist, Alice Strang, as one of his favourite sitters, May Easter, and its title was updated to Interior: The Lady in Black.  

The portrait was bought in 1966 by Mrs Helene Plotkin, who didn’t know who it was by, after she found it during a browse in a charity shop in White Plains, a suburb of New York City.

Then in her late 20s, Helene, an art teacher and artist, was pregnant with her first child, David, and looking for things to decorate her new home. Now aged 88 and living in the city of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Helene describes it as “a remarkable work of art”.  

Helene bought the work for less than $100, and gave it pride of place in her living room. She was unaware for many years that it was the work of a leading Scottish Colourist.

Alice Strang said: “We were thrilled to celebrate a century of selling the Scottish Colourists by achieving impressive results for F.C.B. Cadell, J.D. Fergusson, G.L. Hunter and S.J. Peploe in today’s auction, proving that they are the leading Scottish artists of the twentieth century whose work delighted collectors when it was made and continues to do so today.

“Lyon & Turnbull first sold the work of the Scottish Colourists in 1926, starting with Cadell and therefore it is fitting that tonight’s auction held 100 years later was led by his imposing Interior: The Lady in Black which achieved over £189,000.” 

Paintings by Cadell’s fellow Scottish Colourists, George Leslie Hunter, Samuel John Peploe and John Duncan Fergusson attracted spirited bidding to achieve impressive results.

They included Hunter’s Grapes, Lemons and Pomegranates in a Silver Dish with Wine Glasses and a Loaf of Bread which sold for £66,980, Peploe’s The White Dress went for £164,000 while Fergusson’s Busy Day, Princes Street achieved a price of £53,120.