You never know what you might find at a Goodwill store. Sometimes, an ordinary purchase can turn out to be worth a small fortune. For one Dallas shopper, a routine stop at a thrift store led to an extraordinary discovery. She paid $5.99 for a woodcut. It turned out to be a 1930 Gustave Baumann print, Bright Angel Trail, which was auctioned at Heritage Auctions for $17,500, including the buyer’s premium, this month.
An ordinary trip to Goodwill
Pic credit: Heritage Auctions
She was not looking for art that day. It was a routine stop for the Dallas resident, who was a longtime Goodwill enthusiast. She was out running an ordinary errand and decided to stop by the thrift store. She spotted the woodcut and thought it was impressive. The price tag was less than $6, so she bought it. “What began as an ordinary shopping trip turned into one of the most exciting and unforgettable experiences of my life,” she said, as quoted in a Heritage Auctions press release.She paid $5.99 for the piece and took it home. Its real value only became clear after she began researching it, a process that turned into a bigger project than she had expected.The print was signed and numbered by Baumann. It also bore his distinctive hand-in-heart ink stamp. “The excitement of researching the artwork, uncovering pieces of its history, learning about the artist and watching it go through the auction process has been absolutely fascinating,” the woman said.Born in 1881 in Germany, Baumann became a well-known American printmaker. He worked from his home in Santa Fe and made woodcuts of the landscapes he saw on his trips across the West. The Grand Canyon drew him back again and again. According to the 2019 catalogue raisonné by Gala Chamberlain, Baumann made five colour woodcuts of the canyon, and Bright Angel Trail is among the best known. The trail is one of the most famous routes into the canyon, running down towards the Colorado River, which has carved the landscape over thousands of years.Collectors tend to care about the differences between versions. Baumann often changed a print’s colour scheme from one edition to the next, so two prints from the same block can look quite different. Chamberlain’s catalogue lists this one as number 82, edition II.This print is number 32 in an edition of 125. It is signed, titled and numbered in pencil. Along the lower edge is the artist’s hand-in-heart ink stamp, a mark that helps buyers and experts confirm the authenticity of a Baumann print.The print is in fair to good condition, according to the auction house. However, it does have some issues. The sheet has soft undulations and light buckling along the edges. The central image has moderate toning, and there are scattered spots of foxing, most visible on the back. The upper-right corner has a small loss, and a crease near the top has been masked by the mount. Heritage sold the print as is, and it is framed under glass.
