GUEST: It's a statue that was given to my husband.

He's a contractor, and it was given to him from someone that he works with.

APPRAISER: Have you done any research to try to figure out anything about it or...?

GUEST: I know that it was, like, early 1900, and that's all.

APPRAISER: Okay, it is signed, and it's J.L.

Gérôme, the French artist.

He was born in 1824 in France and really spent most of his career as a very well-regarded and prominent French painter and engraver.

And it wasn't until he was about fifty that he really became a sculptor.

He exhibited sculpture for the first time at the Paris International Exposition in 1878, and this is just a really great example of his work.

As with his paintings, he was very interested in Orientalism and the exotic, and you can really see that in this figure.

She does have a title, Woman With a Veil.

GUEST: Ah.

APPRAISER: And you can see from her costume, she's got this sort of elaborate decoration on the fabric and these jeweled belts and this great coloration of her skirt.

Do you know what it's made out of?

GUEST: Marble?

APPRAISER: Well, it's made out of marble; it's also made out of bronze.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: The majority of the sculpture is bronze, and the feet are marble and they've been painted, which is not something that you typically find.

The face, again, is, uh, marble and painted and she's missing her left hand.

What's interesting about it really is that it's an experimentation.

There's a combination of materials.

The marble is painted.

The bronze is patinated in different colors.

It probably dates from the late 1880s, 1890.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: So, a little bit earlier than you thought.

Yeah.

This model was produced in three different sizes, and this is the largest.

GUEST: Oh!

APPRAISER: So do you have any idea of what the missing hand... how that impacts value?

GUEST: No, but I could imagine, right?

APPRAISER: Obviously, the best scenario would be if it were to suddenly, miraculously appear and it could be reattached.

GUEST: Okay.

Okay.

APPRAISER: If that isn't the case, an option would be to have a professional carve one out of marble to reattach.

An example sold recently at auction with an entirely replaced arm, and that sold for just under $75,000.

GUEST: Yeah?

Hello.

Okay.

(giggling) Oh, wow!

APPRAISER: So, with the hand obviously missing, an auction estimate would be between $60,000 and $80,000, in that range...

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And, you know, it's really, in the scheme of things, a minor, a minor conditional issue, believe it or not.

GUEST: Wow.

Wow.