{"id":636613,"date":"2026-04-29T14:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T14:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/636613\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T14:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T14:56:16","slug":"what-this-consultant-did-with-an-inherited-artwork-that-ended-up-being-worth-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/636613\/","title":{"rendered":"What this consultant did with an inherited artwork that ended up being worth millions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail. Sources: iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The beneficiary: \u201cBrent\u201d is a 72-year-old, newly retired from his work as a consultant in Ontario. Divorced with kids, he\u2019s long been remarried. Brent is one of four cousins on his mother\u2019s side, whose family of sisters included Brent\u2019s eccentric Aunt Val, who lived and hobnobbed across Europe and curated and collected art.<\/p>\n

The inheritance: About 20 years ago, Aunt Val passed away well into her 80s without a partner or children to inherit anything from her eclectic estate, which included artworks she\u2019d collected over five decades of working in the art world. \u201cWhenever a new artist arrived at the gallery, she\u2019d buy a piece of the new guy\u2019s art just to get the ball rolling,\u201d Brent says.<\/p>\n

Hanging nonchalantly on the walls of her flat were original artworks from Henry Moore, Frank Auerbach and, the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me \u2013 at least according to Aunt Val \u2013 a 1969 self-portrait by Francis Bacon (the Irish-British painter, not the English philosopher who said \u201cKnowledge is power\u201d). On the back of Bacon\u2019s painting was the artist\u2019s signature and a dedication to Brent\u2019s aunt, who he called \u201cValerie from the gallery.\u201d These artworks were now to be split equally among the remaining sisters and four cousins.<\/p>\n

What this 50-year-old plans to do with a $333,000 inheritance from her very frugal mother<\/a><\/p>\n

What he learned: First, Brent learned he was unknowingly sitting on an art collection with great historical and familial significance. \u201cTurns out Auntie Val was madly in love with Francis Bacon, but it was an unrequited love, because he was very gay,\u201d Brent says.<\/p>\n

Over the years, she became Bacon\u2019s manager, agent, bill-payer, house cleaner, and unofficial art security guard. \u201cHe\u2019d paint and drink and paint and drink then look at his works and destroy them for being not good enough. Auntie Val would often run over to his studio to rescue them,\u201d Brent says.<\/p>\n

Though priceless in sentimental value, the financial value of the paintings made it seemingly impossible for any one cousin to keep one. \u201cIt was briefly, though not seriously, discussed, because we knew that if one of us wanted to keep a painting, then they\u2019d have to come up with the money to buy out the others,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Either way, to determine their worth, and almost certainly sell, the portraits went to auction in London at Christie\u2019s, where consignors agree on a confidential minimum sale price (\u201cthe reserve\u201d), which guarantees the item won\u2019t sell for any less.<\/p>\n

But Brent did not have the problem of low-balling at all. After much fanfare and a nail-biting auction, Francis Bacon\u2019s 12-by-14-inch Self-Portrait sold in 2006 for \u2013 get ready for this \u2013 US$8.99-million.<\/p>\n

This 43-year-old saw her grandmother\u2019s inheritance split the family, so decided to invest in a better way<\/a><\/p>\n

What he did with it: Pick that jaw up off the floor, because as usual, Brent\u2019s actual inheritance wasn\u2019t anywhere near that size: Christie\u2019s took its 10 per cent commission off the top, and the rest was subject to the U.K. Inheritance Tax \u2013 40 per cent on estates worth over \u00a3325,000 (about $600,000 Canadian dollars).<\/p>\n

Canada technically doesn\u2019t have an inheritance tax, so had Aunt Val lived and died in this country, the portrait wouldn\u2019t have been subject to tax \u2013 until Brent went to sell it, at which point it would have been taxed as a capital property and Brent would have to hand over half his proceeds.<\/p>\n

After fees and taxes and dividing the pot, Brent\u2019s portion of Aunt Val\u2019s full art collection turned out to be just north of $3-million. \u201cI was disappointed at first,\u201d he admits, \u201cthen I gave my head a good shake.\u201d He acknowledges $3-million is a lot, \u201cbut it\u2019s not a hugely life-changing amount. It\u2019s not quit-your-job, travel-the-world kind of money, but it\u2019s a great little retirement nest egg that took a whole lot of worry off my shoulders.<\/p>\n

Brent returned from London to Canada to get back to business as usual. He had only told a few close friends about where he\u2019d been and what happened while he was away. He invested his inheritance into RRSPs that he vowed not to touch until retirement, and luckily he didn\u2019t have to. Two decades later, five years past the usual retirement age of 65, Brent finally retired to sit back back to enjoy his big Bacon bucks.<\/p>\n

Some details may be changed to protect the privacy of the person profiled. Have you recently received an inheritance and would like to participate in Inherited? Send us an e-mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail. Sources: iStock\/Getty Images The beneficiary: \u201cBrent\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75,136],"class_list":["post-636613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-r-fp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}