Unknown to him at the time - indeed until after he bought it at the ensuing auction - was that the sitter was his wife.
The silver specialist at Woolley and Wallis was viewing his company's October 5 picture sale when his eye was taken by the oil on canvas study of a seated nude titled Abbie. It was painted by the Polish artist Marysia Donaldson (fl.1961-1989). He knew that the artist, who currently lives in France, was a long-standing friend of his wife Abigail's family and recalled she had attended the couple's wedding. Mr Butcher arranged a phone bid, successfully bid £230 for the lot, and then rang Donaldson in France to tell her of his purchase. On mentioning the title, she stunned him by saying he had unknowingly purchased a portrait of his own wife. Abigail Butcher, who didn't recognise herself seated against a backdrop of blues and yellows, was equally surprised to see the subject in the altogether.
It emerged that the artist had painted the picture in France in 1995 while staying with Abigail's family. At the time the subject - the artist was the only person to call her Abbie - had been sketched by a pool in a swimming costume, but Donaldson later chose to paint her as a nude. The painting carried a label to the reverse indicating it had been sold through a gallery in Stow-on-the-Wold.
The picture now hangs in pride of place at the Butcher house in Sixpenny Handley near Salisbury.
