It was a stroke of luck.
A Rhode Island woman discovered a long-lost Georgia O’Keeffe painting — valued at around $3 million — tucked away in her elderly aunt’s East Village apartment closet, The Post has learned.
The groundbreaking abstract art had been hidden under a row of fur coats for nearly 40 years — and has never before been seen by the public, the niece and experts said.
“I thought, wow, that’s that’s pretty wild,” said Betsy, 65, who made the jaw-dropping discovery while helping her aunt clean out her apartment.
“I wondered, ‘Is there any way I can keep this?’” she recalled. “But once we started exploring what the value of the piece was, I realized that it’s worth more than my house.”
The provocative landscape painting, titled “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico,” will now hit the auction block later this month, according to Christie’s auction house.
The first hint of the hidden treasure popped up when Betsy’s aunt made an offhand comment while the two were clearing out her apartment to prepare for home health aides in 2022, she said.
“That’s when she mentioned, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s a Georgia O’Keeffe in the hall closet,’” said Betsy, who asked to be identified by only her middle name.
Her since-deceased aunt — a “worldly,” “incredibly accomplished” and “ultra intelligent” former Foreign Services worker whose family requested anonymity for her — had been given the painting as a graduation gift from her mother in the 1960s.
Her mom bought it for just $3,800 on April 15, 1963, at The Downtown Gallery on 51st Street, O’Keeffe’s dealer in Manhattan, according to Christie’s.
The art hung in her apartment until the 1980s, when she got creeped out by a guest who was “eyeing it a bit too closely,” Betsy said.
Her “extremely private” aunt then put it in the closet and never hung it back up after that, she said.
“I think she was fully aware of its value … she recognized that it was an expression of her financial position,” Betsy said.
“She disliked drawing attention to herself.”
It wasn’t until a few weeks ago, while helping her aunt prepare for hospice, that Betsy finally pulled the painting — still in its original box — from the entryway closet, she said.
The box sat under a row of fur coats and was still marked with its original gallery sticker.
On the back of the 10-by-24-inch painting was O’Keeffe’s signature in a star-shaped design along with apparent scrawling on the box from her husband, the renowned American photographer Alfred Stieglitz, Betsy said.
In the painting, O’Keeffe — known as “mother of modernism” — depicts the rolling hills of New Mexico in her signature softened, abstracted style.
“For chuckles, I hung it up on the wall of my house for an afternoon, just to say I had a Georgia O’Keeffe in my house,” Betsy said.
“It’s lovely and very approachable for O’Keeffe,” Betsy said.
“To me it’s very evocative of the female form,” she said.
“The men in the family who’ve seen this have commented, there seems to be a number of ‘vaginas’ in the picture,” she said — adding she also sees a woman’s knee and a nipple hidden in the hills.
The painting — whose existence was only known through a photograph taken in 1931 — will be auctioned off on Nov. 17, according to Christie’s.
Its estimated value is “in the region of $3 million,” the auction house said.
Art lovers can also view it during a free, public exhibition from Nov. 7-17 at 20 Rockefeller Center.
Part of the paintings’ proceeds will be donated to an “educational institution,” and a portion will go to Betsy and other relatives, “for things like paying off the mortgage,” she said.
Betsy’s aunt, who never married and didn’t have children, died shortly after the painting was discovered at age 98.
She graduated from several prestigious academic institutions, achieving the highest-ever score on the Civil Service Exam at the time. She also traveled widely as part of the Foreign Service, was fluent in at least four languages, and was accomplished as a world-ranked bridge master.
“This is a wonderful painting, a remarkable story, and extraordinary opportunity for collectors and the general public alike,” said Tylee Abbott, senior specialist and head of American Art at Christie’s. “Rediscoveries are rare in the well-established market for academically researched and highly revered historic American artists.”
He added, “To uncover a seminal work, representative of this 20th-century master’s deep personal engagement with the landscape, a pillar of her career, which is exquisitely rendered and well preserved, is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and absolutely thrilling.”
