Priest Pays $660 for Painting Worth $660K, What Will He Do With the Money? (VIDEO)
Ten years ago in an antiques shop in Cheshire, England, Father Jamie MacLeod had to decide between buying a bookcase and a painting. He wanted both, but he thought that would be greedy, so he just bought the painting, an intriguing portrait that caught his eye with the inscription "Sir A.VAN DYCK."
"There was something about the portrait, something about him," said Father Jamie. "The character, who in one sense looked rather an angry person but the more I looked at him and the years that went on the more I wanted to know more."
On a whim, the priest, who runs a retreat house in Whaley Bridge outside of Manchester, took the painting to a session of the BBC's "Antiques Roadshow" last year. When host Fiona Bruce saw it, she had a hunch it could be a genuine work by famed 17th-century master Anthony van Dyck, the leading court painter under King Charles I.
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Father Jamie allowed the painting to be restored in a months-long process and got the news from an expert on the artist's work: The portrait is a real van Dyck – of a Belgian official – and it's worth about $661,000.
"I'm just completely shocked," Father Jamie said upon hearing the news.
He plans to sell the painting and use the money to buy new church bells to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I.
"When we had lost all our soldiers through the war, nothing really happened regarding having bells hung or recast to commemorate those who had lost their lives," he said. "When we had the Second World War, this happened automatically up and down the country.
"I hope that this would be something that will happen all over the country, so that town halls and cities and villages and everywhere else will have church bells rung that will tell out the time but also be that reminder."
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