Antiques Roadshow: Guest speechless after told true value of $39 painting she nearly gave away

The art owner was left stunned at how much her painting was worth.

A guest on Antiques Roadshow was left speechless after she was told the true value of her £18 ($39) painting that she nearly gave away to charity.

During the show’s trip to Derbyshire in the UK’s midlands, expert Lawrence Hendra came across a guest who was interested in having a piece of artwork evaluated.

The intriguing piece of artwork caught Hendra’s eye, leaving him stunned at who created the artwork.

“So of all the paintings I was not expecting to see here at Cromford Mills in Derbyshire, is a painting by an artist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pili Pili Mulongoy.”

The painting features six antelopes grazing in a field.

The guest explained she purchased the artwork in a collection of other paintings and prints and didn’t intend keeping more than half of them.

Antiques Roadshow expert Lawrence Hendra valued a Pili Pili Mulongoy painting NZ$6400 to $10,800.

She hoped to donate the painting and prints to a charity shop. But something attracted her to keeping the artwork featuring the antelopes.

“I had this one in my arms and I noticed that it had got a signature and could tell that it was a real painting,” she told Hendra.

“I tried to do some research about it and it’s been on my wall ever since.”

When asked what attracted the owner to the artwork, she said: “I think you love it or you hate it and it’s really lovely and colourful and I love the little antelope and I can appreciate how it’s painted. I paint myself and I just really love it.”

Hendra revealed Pili Pili’s art was “very popular” and collected by the Belgium royal family.

“As you can see, it’s signed on the bottom right, Pili Pili, and he came from a very working-class family; he trained as a plumber and a builder and then he fell under guidance of a French artist.

“He went to a drawing school set up by him, he won a prize and thereafter he managed to develop this style of painting that was uniquely his own and you see a lot of this very delicate, vertical colouring in his pictures.

“This is on canvas, watercolours and oils, but they’re often very flat in perspective.

“The animals, which are the main features of his work, are often on the same picture plain as grass and sometimes forest-type backgrounds.”

The art owner was left stunned at how much her painting was worth.

True value of $39 painting shocks

After revealing she paid only £18 ($39) for the painting about six years ago among a bunch that she didn’t want to keep, Hendra butted in asking: “But you kept this one crucially. Okay well, was it £18 well spent?”

She chuckled: “Good job I didn’t give it away.”

So how much is the painting worth?

“To be honest, if this were to go under the hammer today, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it fetch between £3000-£5000 ($6500-$10,828).”

Onlookers gasped at the revelation with the owner exclaiming “No!” in disbelief.

Speechless and stumbling across her words, the owner began to giggle, responding: “Okay, thank you Lawrence.”