A painting created by David Hockney early in his career was discovered during the BBC’s British television program ‘Antiques Roadshow’.

The show features appraisers traveling to different parts of the UK to value collectables and antiques brought in by residents. The owner of the work depicting green fields showed it to the experts of the show hoping that a hidden treasure would be revealed.

Finally, the owner of the painting and his fellow villagers were amazed to hear that it is a work by David Hockney, Britain’s most famous living artist, and that its value is 30,000 British pounds.

As he explained, his grandfather met Hockney while working at a railway station in the English village of Trimley St Mary in 1957.

“My grandfather Wallace saw two young artists on the platform when he was working at the miniature station. He noticed their equipment and called them over and offered them a cup of tea. He also invited them to his house for lunch on Sunday, because they lived in difficult conditions. So they went to Sunday lunch and he said ‘bring a painting’ and he bought a painting from each of them,” said the owner of the artwork.

“A year later he found that one of them had won the gold medal from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts,” he added.

David Hockney, 85, is one of the most popular and recognizable painters of his generation. The British painter has created some of the most iconic depictions of southern California in the 20th century with Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool (1966) and A Bigger Splash (1967).

His works from the “California Dreaming” series sell for millions of dollars at auction.