A.I. Chatbot Helps a $100 Thrift Store Painting Sell for Over $250,000

Sixty years ago, Helene Plotkin was perusing a thrift store in White Plains, N.Y., when a painting nestled among several others caught her eye.Plotkin, who has an undergraduate degree in art, found herself mesmerized by the artwork’s bursts of color and its bold brushwork, which evoked the Fauvist style she loved.In the painting, a woman dressed in black sits in a domestic setting dashed with bright blue and orange hues.

Plotkin remembers paying less than $100 for it.The painting hung on Plotkin’s wall until last December, when, with the help of artificial intelligence, she discovered that her decades-ago thrift find was, in fact, a relic of European art history.Later verified by art appraisers as an original work by the acclaimed Scottish Colorist F.C.B.Cadell, Plotkin’s painting sold to a private buyer at auction this month for 189,200 pounds with fees, or roughly $254,000.Stories of family heirlooms that turn out to be worth fortunes have long been fodder for television shows like “Antiques Roadshow” and “Pawn Stars.” Yet Plotkin’s path to profit suggests that A.I.

may be able to provide the rank-and-file with the kind of object-identification services historically limited to the expertly trained human eye.Plotkin, 88, had long sensed a “regal feeling” in Cadell’s portrait, imagining its subject as, say, a politician’s wife (the woman has always reminded Plotkin of Eleanor Roosevelt).But she never suspected that she owned a masterpiece worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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