Van Dyke was an artistic prodigy who created his Saint Jerome portrait when he was just 19 years old.

"Many of the paintings (I buy) are rejects," he said. "But every painting I buy gets a careful examination and then I feel a responsibility to house it, which is a bit of a problem because I have 2,000 paintings."

After years of investigation, scholars have confirmed that Van Dyke was indeed the artist who had created the sketch purchased by Roberts.

"I suppose it's not every day that a painting picked up for $600 with bird droppings on the back turns out to be a masterpiece of European Art," he stated.

In his search for "orphaned art," Roberts has developed a method for examining works of art to determine attribution, a method he calls "sophisticated, rigorous, and highly unorthodox."

"When (findings like this) do occur, it usually is international news," said Tammis Groft, Executive Director of the Albany Institute of History & Art, where the original Van Dyke sketch is currently on display. "To discover a painting that has not been seen probably by the public for over 400 years, and not knowing it existed or where it was is really quite remarkable."

The sketch will be on view to the public in the museum's Christine & George R. Hearst III Gallery until Sunday October 6, 2019.