You befriend a curmudgeonly stranger and one day, out of the blue, the old grouch bequeaths you a gift to change your life. But for Mark Herman, a former dog walker now living on Social Security, an auction house in Dallas told him exactly how much that fantasy was worth. In his cluttered apartment in Upper Manhattan on Tuesday, Mr. Herman watched speechless as the auctioneer declared the final bid on Lot 77070, an untitled Chuck Close painting that briefly, improbably, belonged to him. On hand to record Mr. Herman’s reaction was Amy Sargeant, one of two filmmakers who contacted him after the story of his painting appeared in The New York Times this summer. She had read about it on a ferry to a remote island in Tanzania.

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Persons: Mark Herman, Herman, Chuck, Herman’s, Amy Sargeant Organizations: Social Security, New York Times Locations: Dallas, Upper Manhattan, improbably, Tanzania