A painting bought at a Minnesota garage sale in 2016 is actually a lost “orphaned” artwork by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh that could be worth millions.

The unnamed party who bought the painting at the garage sale turned it over to art data science firm LMI Group International in 2019 after the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands said the work could not be attributed to the 19th century painter.

LMI then did its own study, and concluded that the painting is a Van Gogh work, a translation of the “Portrait of Niels Gaihede” by Danish artist Michael Ancher. LMI has dubbed the painting “Elimar” for the name inscribed on the subject’s sleeve in the lower right of the painting.

The name, the firm says, is a reference to a character from a novel by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, a favorite author of Van Gogh. 

If “Elimar” is confirmed by the Dutch museum as a Van Gogh work, it could be worth up to $15 million, according to art magazine ARTNews. 

The person who owned it prior to LMI, however, bought it for less than $50, according to Smithsonian magazine.

LMI Group contends that Van Gogh painted “Elimar” during his time in an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, the same place where he painted the famous “The Starry Night.”

The letters in the name were also a 94% match to other letters Van Gogh painted in other works, LMI Group said in a release.

A pigment used in the painting thought to have originated after Van Gogh’s death was also connected to an 1883 patent by the team of art researchers, placing its existence years before the artist’s 1890 suicide.

A human hair embedded in the surface of the work was DNA tested and found to belong to a red-haired man, LMI Group said. Van Gogh was himself a redhead, though the hair has not been conclusively linked to him.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.