1835 Francis Calcraft Turner Painting

Appraised on: July 14, 2001

Appraised in: New York, New York

Appraised by: Peter Fairbanks

Category: Paintings & Drawings

Episode Info: Cats and Dogs (#1619)

Originally Aired: November 12, 2012

IMAGE: 1 of 4  

Appraisal Video: (1:44)

GUEST: At the time, my mother was looking for a baby grand piano for my sister. She was learning how to play the piano. And it happened to be that a friend of the family had to clean out a lady's apartment who'd just passed away. So along with the piano came the painting.

APPRAISER: Your painting is by Francis Calcraft Turner. In the lower left is a signature. And it's dated 1835. This is a pointer. Not the pointer that you'd find today, because they've been bred far differently since. But the British were very proud of their animals, and they, just around this time, started to do portraits of their best sheep or their bull or their dog or horse. And he was well known for this. One lovely aspect of it is over in the right-hand side, you have a nice landscape in the background. The painting has a label on its reverse, which is the label of Arthur Ackermann & Sons, which was this famous sporting dealer. And they dealt with sporting pictures. And that's kind of wonderful to have that. This painting of this pointer has some condition issues. A colleague of mine didn't like the condition. Doesn't bother me so much, because that cracking that you see, or hazing, I think is only in the varnish, and the varnish is on top of the painting. And I think when it's clean, that craquelure will disappear. It's a lovely picture which, with the cleaning first, I think probably would bring somewhere between $12,000 and $16,000.

GUEST: Wow.