She bought a $4 thrift store painting. It was a lost N.C. Wyeth worth up to $250,000

The woman wasn't shopping for fine art at the Savers thrift store in Manchester, New Hampshire. She was looking for a nice frame — something she could put a different picture in.

Instead, she made a life-changing discovery.

The painting she pulled out of a mismatched pile of frames at a New Hampshire thrift store turned out to be a long-lost 1930s work by American master N.C. Wyeth of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

The woman bought the painting from Savers for a mere $4.

That painting, now believed to be N.C. Wyeth's work "Ramona," is expected to fetch as much as $250,000 at a Sept. 19. auction by Bonhams Skinner.

The woman would like to remain anonymous, Bonhams said.

"It's all a bit overwhelming for her," said Bonhams spokeswoman Sheri Middleton.

The 'lost' N.C. Wyeth painting hung in a New Hampshire home for years

Even as she pulled the heavy, dusty old painting out of a mismatched pile of frames, the woman remembered joking she'd maybe found a genuine article.

Rather than cut it out of its frame, she decided to hang it in her home, never suspecting it was the work of an American master. She even went as far as to search for it on the internet, but didn't find anything there.

Still, it was a striking work. From his Chadds Ford studio, N.C. Wyeth was world-renowned for his paintings and illustrations for works such as "Treasure Island." He also was the father of American master Andrew Wyeth.

This piece, one of four Wyeth created for a 1939 edition of Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 book "Ramona," depicts the tension between an orphan and her unforgiving foster mother.

It stayed in her home for years until she decided to post the painting on a Facebook group called "Things Found in Walls."

That's when things got interesting.

Strangers on internet told her she might have treasure

Some commenters in the Facebook group recognized the painting as a possible N.C. Wyeth. They sent the woman to the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, as well as to a former Wyeth curator in Maine named Lauren Lewis.

Lewis drove three hours to meet the woman, according to an account by the auction house. After seeing Lewis' excitement, the woman began to realize for the first time that the painting might be real.

Experts at auction house Bonhams Skinner confirmed the likely provenance of the painting, not just from the style of painting but the utilitarian frame and the backing panel that Wyeth was known to use.

“Beginning in the mid-1930s, Wyeth used a particular type of artist board — Weber ‘Renaissance’ panels, distinctive for their red backs and elaborate labels — and this was the case for this painting,” auction house expert Kathleen Leland told art blog Hyperallergic this month.

N.C. Wyeth's 'Ramona' expected to fetch hundreds of thousands at auction

With viewings scheduled through the month, Bonhams Skinner expects the painting to fetch anywhere between $150,000 and $250,000 in September.

Some of Wyeth's better-known works, such as "Portrait of a Farmer," have gone up for millions of dollars at auction.

The largest known collection of N.C. Wyeth works is held by the the Brandywine Museum of Art, which also offers tours of the artist's Chadds Ford home and studio.

Only one of the other three illustrations from the "Ramona" book is known to have been recovered.

The auction house suspects that book publisher Little, Brown had offered the "Ramona" painting as a gift to either a book editor or to the book author's estate.

Thrift-store hounds probably shouldn't get their hopes up they'll find similar lost paintings, Bonhams Skinner expert Kathleen Leland told USA TODAY Network.

“Discoveries such as this are certainly rare," Leland wrote in an email. "Not only because of the limited supply of remarkable works that end up in thrift shops, but also because it is difficult for anyone other than an expert in antiques or fine art to be able to recognize the significance of what they have found."

Matthew Korfhage is a Philadelphia-based writer for USA TODAY Network. Reach him at mkorfhage@gannett.com, or follow him on the website formerly known as Twitter at @matthewkorfhage.

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This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: A woman bought a lost N.C. Wyeth painting for $4 at a thrift store