A painting from a Proctor attic sold for $96,600 at a Massachusetts auction house.

Jessie Wilcox Smith painted "Curly Locks" in 1914 for Good Housekeeping Magazine, part of a series dealing with Mother Goose. The 26-inch by 33-inch work, made with three different types of paint, somehow found its way to Vermont before spending decades in an attic.

Joshua Payne, a spokesman for Kaminski Auctions in Beverly, Mass., said he could not give the name of either the buyer or the seller, but was able to relay some details about how the auction house came to sell the painting on consignment.

"The consigner had three spinster aunts who lived in a house in Rutland," he said.

As a child, Payne said the woman visited the aunts and described the house as full of treasures. After every visit, the aunts would let her take a small object with her as a gift.

Years later, after two of the aunts had died, Payne said the woman helped move the surviving aunt into a retirement home. The aunt gave her the painting as a thank-you present.

"She put it in her attic and hadn't looked at it in something like 30 years," Payne said.

With her daughter getting married, Payne said the woman decided to have the painting appraised and sell it to help fund the wedding. The appraisal originally valued the painting between $7,500 and $12,500.

"She was shocked at the original estimate," Payne said. "She was elated to hear it went for such a high price."

Smith was born in Philadelphia in 1863, and studied first at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later under Howard Pyle. She was a prolific illustrator at the turn of the century, and is known for her work on children's books and covers for Good Housekeeping.

"She must have done 50 to 100, 150 covers for that magazine," said Dick Chodkowski, co-owner of Monroe Street Books in Middlebury and himself an illustrator of children's books. "She was one of the famous women illustrators."

Smith died in 1935.

Chodkowski said Smith's work is sought-after by collectors, and the price at the auction did not surprise him.

"She had a wonderful way of drawing children," he said. "That was her trademark, the children she did. They were very well-done and had individuality. … She had a unique style that was pretty much her own."

gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com