Google search helps family sell 1971 Enwonwu portrait of American hair dresser living in Lagos for N507M

In 1971, an American hair stylist living in Lagos posed for a portrait by the artist Ben Enwonwu of Nigeria. Christine Elizabeth Davis (who was the wife of a British missionary) wore an elegant Nigerian gele, or head wrap, and sat so still that the painting was completed in a week. The finished work, “Christine,” then moved with the Davis family to Texas in 1978.

Four decades later, Christine’s stepson reached out to Sotheby’s online site to find out just how much the painting might be worth today. He was astounded by what he found.

What he had assumed to be just a personal heirloom was revealed to him to be worth an estimated £100,000 to £150,000, which was itself a conservative estimate.

“The portrait is a personal heirloom, so not such an easy decision to make,” Hannah O’Leary, Sotheby’s head of modern and contemporary African art, said of the stepson’s wish to part with the painting. “But the time is great to sell it.”

“If you told me that my painting of my grandmother was worth six figures, I would feel a little less sentimental about it,” she said. For most people, “it’s a life-changing amount of money.”

The exact amount of money it would generate was unknown then, of course, until the auction on Tuesday when it was sold for a whopping $1.4 million.

According to Ms. O’Leary, the increasing patronage of Nigerian and African art in the international scene has engendered a rediscovery of a lot of unsung Nigerian artists like Ben Enwonwu, who died in 1994.

“These works are coming out of the woodwork,” she said.

In paticular, Mr. Enwonwu’s paintings have been enjoying a lot of attention in the art scene lately. Just last year, a 1974 portrait of a Yoruba princess, “Tutu” was sold for 1.2 million pounds ($1.49 million) in an auction at Bonhams, four times the initial estimated value. This has brought him a lot of renewed reverence.

His son, Oliver Enwonwu (a 44-year-old, Lagos-based figurative painter and gallerist) expressed satisfaction over the latest developments regarding his father’s legacy.  “I’m very happy that my father is getting his due, but there’s still a long way to go,” he said.

Oliver noted that Christine was more than just the portrait of a woman. It served as a precursor to other pieces which were influenced by the utter chaos and bloodshed of the Biafran War. With its serene femininity and beauty, it stood as a stark contrast to the pulse of the time, and sought to signal peace and unity and help “bring our peoples together,”