James Tarmy is looking for bargains on Bloomberg and he points to Adolphe Monticelli, a fallen star of the 19th Century, as the place to look for high quality, consequential work that is priced far below his comparable peers:
Vincent van Gogh considered him a mentor; Paul Cézanne apparently found inspiration in his landscapes; Oscar Wilde even lamented selling a Monticelli in De Profundis. But eventually the painter was eclipsed by the impressionists. His work languished for almost a century. Recently there have been efforts to resuscitate his market. A 2008-09 exhibition in Marseille paired Monticelli with Van Gogh—an influential bit of curation that reminded collectors of the forgotten master. In 2013 a late Monticelli, Au Bord de la Rivière, Marseilles, sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $413,000, five times its high estimate.
Art Investing: Smart Buys Are Overlooked, Underappreciated Works (Bloomberg)