A man from Murcia in Spain couldn’t believe his luck when a gallery told him the painting he found propped up against a wall in Sevilla was an original by 19th century Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla.
Yet as soon as he saw a police notice about the painting being “stolen,” Andrés Hurtado didn’t waste any time doing the right thing—”fulfilling his obligation” as he would later describe it.
Hurtado was visiting Sevilla with his family when he saw a rather small and nondescript painting of a beachscape leaning up against the garden wall of a house. Assuming it was left for the garbage man, Hurtado took an instant fancy for the beautiful golden frame, and decided to spare it from the landfill.
The painting’s true owners left it against the wall in what is fair to describe as probably a lapse of concentration familiar to many who have tried to pack for a long trip in a hurry.
The family were bringing the painting to a beach house, a little family tradition, but while they were loading their car they were apparently also blocking traffic, and amid a flurry of honking horns, they rushed and left it behind.
“We picked it up because of the frame, not because of the painting,” Murtado, who passed by the house, told Radio Sevilla on Wednesday.
With the help of a little AI magic, Hurtado discovered that the painting he took for the frame was actually an original Sorolla, worth as much as €150,000. Hurtado couldn’t believe it, so he called an auction house in Madrid, which confirmed both the painting and the value.
Meanwhile, the family who lost it was frantically looking for it, not realizing it had been taken over 300 miles back to Murcia. They put up flyers around the neighborhood asking for information about a painting “of great sentimental value,” while discreetly reporting the work as having been stolen to the police.
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Hurtado was perhaps getting ready to celebrate, but later the same evening, news reached him that a painting had been stolen from Sevilla, and the picture was of the very thing he’d assumed was garbage.
“‘But it’s the one I have!'” Murtado told El Mundo. “I immediately called the police and told them that the news was not true, that the painting had not been stolen, that I had it and that it was lying in the street.”
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To the credit of the police, they told Murtado not to worry about anything, and said to sit tight while they organized for the artwork’s return: he wouldn’t have to do anything.
Overjoyed to be reunited with their painting, the family have since told reporters that they’ve prepared a reward for Murtado.
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