Couple buys $350,000 Maud Lewis painting once traded for grilled cheese

In an archival CBC clip, she appears as a tiny, hunched-over woman, crippled by arthritis, with a ready smile and paintbrush.

Sequestered in a cramped tiny house stuffed with art supplies, she seems taken aback by the intruding cameras, modestly deflecting praise as she draws brightly coloured pastoral scenes of rural life in Nova Scotia.

Her name is Maud Lewis, and

‘‘ Right now the coolest thing in the world is to have a Maud Lewis in your house.

JUSTIN MILLER AUCTIONEER

before she died in 1970 at age 67, after a lifetime of physical infirmity and barely making ends meet, it was clear the proud Maritimer’s vibrantly whimsical portraits were gaining traction with both critics and the tourists who snapped them up along the highway for $2 a pop.

It was a portent of bigger things to come after a 1965 CBC doc brought her to national attention, U.S. president Richard Nixon championed her work and the heartwarming biodoc “Maudie” brought her story to the big screen in 2016.

Year after year, decade after decade, her fame grew as her homespun, deceptively childlike paintings gained new admirers, their values creeping steadily higher.

From $10 in her lifetime, to $1,000 in the ’90s, to $10,000 in more recent years, to $45,000 in 2017, to $67,000 last November.

And then came “Black Truck,” which broke the artistic sound barrier last week when the 1967 painting was auctioned not for an expected high of $35,000 but for $350,000 — 10 times that much — breaking the previous record for her work by an astounding $283,000 and catapulting Lewis into a new league of treasured Canadian artists.

“Maud Lewis has become a part of popular culture,” notes Ethan Miller of the New Hamburg-based Miller & Miller Auctions, which sold the record-breaking painting.

“She’s the quintessential underdog the world rallies behind in this day and age — the person that rallies after physical adversity. All the factors you’d expect of any successful folk artist.

“It’s the perfect story, the perfect painting and the perfect artist for the time we live in. All the factors were in place for this to happen. It just needed a spark in the tinderbox.”

That spark came from a news story that appeared days before the auction detailing how “Black Truck” was being sold by the owners of a London, Ont., diner who got it from an art dealer 50 years ago in exchange for a few grilled cheese sandwiches.

“It’s just an incredible story to think it was traded for grilled cheese sandwiches,” says the Canadian grandfather who bought the painting last week and asked to remain anonymous, citing privacy concerns, art thieves and nosy neighbours. “Nowadays there aren’t too many bright stories in the news. When I saw this picture, it just kind of jumped out at me and I said to my wife, laughing, ‘I’ve been looking for a little old black truck for four or five years. It looks like I might have found it!’

“She took a look at the picture and fell in love with it too. It was just such a bright-coloured, cheery picture. It just popped out and put a smile on your face.”

The night before the auction they researched Lewis — who they had never heard of — and watched the movie “Maudie” at their daughter’s suggestion, which convinced them to go forward with a bid.

“She’s what Canada used to be all about,” says the proud westerner, calling Lewis “a true artist.”

“Here’s this little (arthritis-plagued) woman. Her whole body is full of mean bones and yet her mind hasn’t got a mean bone in it. How much effort each brush stroke must have taken, doing it to put a smile on somebody’s else face. “That’s Canada!”

When the online auction kicked off, he had no sense how high bidding would go, for himself or others.

“We weren’t planning on spending that kind of money, but you get wrapped up in it and it’s a fantastic story,” he notes.

“There was still interest in it as the price kept going up so I knew we were really on to something.”

By the time bids hit $330,000, still edging up in $10,000 increments, he decided to add an extra $10,000, which sealed the deal.

“The wife kept saying we’d go to half a million,” he says, adding that he also bid $65,000 on a pair of handwritten notes from Lewis that ended up going to someone else.

“But I was a ways from willing to go to that.”

For auctioneers Justin and Ethan Miller, this record-breaking sale is just the tip of the iceberg.

“If you compare Maud to other Canadian artists over the past few decades, a lot would have a point in their story where a work far exceeds everybody’s expectations and puts them on the international map,” notes Justin. “That’s the point we’re at with Maud Lewis.”

“Canada is just coming into its own as far as paying for some of this material,” agrees Ethan, comparing Lewis to American folk artist Grandma Moses, whose paintings have sold for more than $1 million.

“She’s the classic example of a sleeper — for years undiscovered and for years coming into her own.”

A week before the auction, a CBC news story appeared with a reference to “The Search for the First $100,000 Maud.”

“My prediction, and I don’t know if it’s a year or two from now,” says Justin, “is that the next article will be ‘The Search For the First Million-Dollar Maud.’ ”

There are many reasons: her cheery paintings are a balm for troubled times, the award-winning Sally Hawkins film brought Lewis into people’s living rooms, the growing acceptance of Lewis’s work as true art (versus folk art) 52 years after she died of pneumonia.

“There’s something about Maud’s painting that resonates with everybody,” says Justin, noting that a second Lewis painting sold for $75,000 at the same auction.

“You look at fine art. People don’t relate to those boring pictures you see of landscapes.

“There’s something about Maud’s work that’s so naive and relatable and fun and colourful that the average person just relates to it.

“Right now the coolest thing in the world is to have a Maud Lewis in your house.”

It’s certainly the case for the anonymous western buyer, a non-critic who responded to the painting emotionally and plans to hang it not in a gallery, but on the wall of a spare bedroom for his grandkids to enjoy during sleepovers.

“It’s a pretty nice way for a little eight-year-old to go to sleep, looking at a picture like that,” he enthuses. “We’ll get years and years of enjoyment out of it.”

Given his $350,000 bid for a painting that last traded for grilled cheese sandwiches, he says eating in a diner will never be the same.

“I’ll be thinking more about the picture than the grilled cheese sandwich,” he laughs.

“If you really look at it, it’s incredible what she’s done.”