Irish buyer takes a de Kooning punt

A private art collector in Co Wexford landed a €75,000 windfall this week when a painting he owned sold for 150 times its reserve price at auction. The oil painting, The Big Apple, New York signed "de Kooning" sold in Morgan O'Driscoll's online art auction on Monday night. It attracted more than 100 bids and sold despite having a pre-sale estimate of just €1,000-€1,500.

It was eventually secured by an Irish buyer who beat off competition from an under- bidder in Norway. Skibbereen, Co Cork- based auctioneer Morgan O'Driscoll said afterwards he was "flabbergasted and gobsmacked by the result" and told The Irish Times the vendor had "a reserve of just €500 on the painting" and "would have been delighted to get more". He said the unnamed vendor was "astonished and thrilled" by the price achieved.

The oil-on-canvas painting, measuring 96.50 x 61cm (38 x 24in) was catalogued as “signed lower right de Kooning”. Mr O’Driscoll said the vendor had “bought the painting around five years ago at an auction [in Ireland] for €1,500”.

Neither Mr O'Driscoll, nor the previous auctioneer, could ascertain the exact identity of the artist. Judging by the competitive bidding and the price achieved, some bidders apparently believed that it is, in fact, by Willem de Kooning. This could be of critical importance.

De Kooning is one of the most famous and most expensive American artists of the late 20th century.

He was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1904, emigrated to the US as a stowaway on a ship and became a major artist in New York, where he died in 1997, aged 92.

He was one of a group of New York artists – including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko – who painted in a style known as Abstract Expressionism and whose paintings have been selling for huge prices in recent decades. Paintings by de Kooning often sell for tens of millions of dollars at auction.

For example, last year, at Christie's New York a painting dated 1977 and described as Untitled VIII signed "de Kooning" sold for $32 million (€25.2 million).

Many of his paintings are in galleries and museums including New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The highest price ever paid for one of his works was in 2006 when Woman III was reputedly sold for $137.5 million in a private transaction by collector David Geffen to hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen.

Proving that the painting is an authentic Willem de Kooning painting could take considerable time and effort. But the gamble could pay off. Or not.