1924 Paul Troubetzkoy Sculpture

Appraised on: August 13, 2005

Appraised in: Los Angeles, California

Appraised by: Kerry Shrives

Category: Metalwork & Sculpture

Episode Info: Forever Young (#1521)
Los Angeles, Hour 2 (#1008)

Originally Aired: February 27, 2006

IMAGE: 1 of 2  

Appraisal Video: (1:43)

GUEST: The sitter is my mother. And this is 1924, she was seven years old. It's in France, and she was going to school there. At the time she was there with her family. Her father came over to do the reconstruction after World War I. He was a lumberman, and the family was over there living in France.

APPRAISER: It's a wonderful bronze. Such an appealing subject. The artist has signed it here, it's Paul Troubetzkoy, who was sort of a fairly colorful character. It's signed and dated 1924 and has a foundry mark here, it's a Paris foundry. And he was born in Italy, the second son of a Russian prince, and his mother was an American lyric singer.

GUEST: Really? Interesting.

APPRAISER: And it seemed that he was always ahead of conflict. He moved from Russia to France in 1905, then he left France to come to America, and then went back to France. He did a whole variety of subjects. He did animal topics, he did famous personalities, politicians of the time, intellectual thinkers, authors and illustrators. But his real flourishing part of his career was doing society portraits. A lot of artists earn their living traveling in high society, and so there are lots of elegant men and women that had their portraits done. And obviously, these sort of charming young children as well.

GUEST: Well, it's so fascinating to hear what you say because it's just been my mom, you know, in our house. And I, you know, never really thought about it.

APPRAISER: Some of the figures that have come up on the market tend to be less personal in nature and more sort of recognizable. But it still has a considerable value, and if you had to find something by this artist of a comparable scale, you'd expect to pay retail price in the $20,000 range.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: So it's a very valuable piece.

GUEST: Wow.