A painting by Leonora Carrington that has spent roughly seventy years out of public view is about to reappear at auction. Fil d'Or, made in 1953, will lead Heritage Auctions' Modern and Contemporary Art sale on 10 November 2026, where it carries an estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. The work takes its title from the French for gold thread, a reference to the fine scraped lines that shape its central image: an otherworldly owl, its eyes staring out from a web of intersecting marks.

Carrington made the picture using grattage, a method of scraping through layers of wet paint to expose the textures beneath. The technique was pioneered in the 1920s by Max Ernst, her one-time partner, and became closely linked with Surrealist automatism. Fil d'Or is one of only a small number of Carrington's grattage works to reach the market. She painted it in Mexico, where she had sought refuge after war broke out in Europe, and its imagery reflects the alchemy and mysticism that run through much of her work.

The painting has a short, unbroken ownership history. In the year it was made, it was bought from the Galeria de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City by a family of art patrons in California, and it stayed with that family ever since. The present consignor inherited the picture and, after turning down private offers over the years, has decided to sell. Aviva Lehmann, Heritage's deputy chairman of fine art, said she expects bidding from established Carrington collectors as well as buyers looking for a first work by the artist.

The reappearance comes as interest in Surrealist art remains strong at auction. Carrington's Les Distractions de Dagobert sold for $28.5 million at Sotheby's in 2024, and her works have logged more than $6 million in public sales so far in 2026, according to the Artnet Price Database, after $8.1 million in 2025. The same Heritage sale will also offer two canvases by Kim Whanki from his New York years, a Banksy rat and a 1962 Joan Miro maquette for the arch in his sculpture garden at the Fondation Maeght.