This painting, though, had an antique-looking frame, with a gold embossed nameplate carrying the artist's last name, Cortes, and a French title, Marche aux fleurs (Flower Market).
"I could tell it was a real painting, and that it was older," she said, "as opposed to something you might get at Ocean Gallery," Ocean City's warehouse store of affordable art.
In her office, she typed the artist's name into Google. What turned up was this:
Born in 1882 in Lagny-sur-Marne, 20 miles east of Paris, Cortes was the son of a Spanish court painter, who was taught by his father and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A painter with remarkable Impressionistic flair, Cortes died in 1969. He was best known for his Paris street scenes (like the one on Tonelli's desk). Some of those, she found through further Googling, had sold recently at prices nearing $60,000.
"The hair on the back of my neck was standing up by then," she said. She compared the signature on her painting with those she was able to call up on the computer. It seemed an exact match.
Tonelli says the painting, had it not been singled out in the store, probably would have been priced at $100. Instead, Tonelli, who has worked at the store for three years, called headquarters.
"This type of thing can happen in any Goodwill store. We get amazing things donated all the time. It's really, truly a treasure hunt to walk in the store," she said. "Part of the reason we're so cautious is that we had a piece of art come through years ago that sold for $50 and turned out to be worth $3,000."
The Cortes painting was taken to the Goodwill Industries regional headquarters in Baltimore, where, spokesman Villar said, local art experts were invited to examine it. They determined that Goodwill very well might have the genuine article in its hands.
"The best next step seemed to be to contact someone who could authenticate it," Villar said. "We shipped it to Sotheby's so they could clean it, give us authentication and auction it off."
The prestigious New York auction house called back with good news.
"They said it was very much a genuine work of art and a great find," Villar said. "We were blown away. Definitely this is something that doesn't happen to us every day. This is the first time Sotheby's has ever been involved in one of our sales."
Sotheby's cleaned the painting; checked, as it routinely does, to see whether the painting had ever been reported stolen (as has happened with some Cortes pieces); and cleared it for auction.
