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Edward Henry Potthast Works of Art, ca. 1890

Value (2012) | $41,000 Auction – $63,000 Auction
Watch  

GUEST:
Well, I brought some Potthast... a Potthast painting and two Potthast sketchings. This one was given to my husband and myself when we were married 40 years ago. Then when my father died, I inherited this one and then the far one. Potthast is my grandmother's uncle.

APPRAISER:
Oh, wow. He's really one of Cincinnati's favorite sons when it comes to fine art in the 19th and 20th centuries, as you probably know. Potthast lived from 1857 to 1927. He studied in Germany, he studied in Paris, and in Paris, he becomes involved with what was called the Grez arts colony, and two artists in particular, Roderick O'Connor and Robert Vonnoh, influenced him a great deal and by 1889, 1890, really turned him on to impressionism. In terms of dating these, certainly circa last quarter of the 19th century. So we really know him as a full-blown impressionist.

GUEST:
Yeah.

APPRAISER:
And of course we know him best for his beach scenes, like we see here. This is a crayon, it's on paper. This painting, which is obviously not a coastal view, not a sea, but does have a lake with sailboats. It's a wonderful impressionist painting, very colorful. The 12-by-16 size, which was one of the standard sizes that he painted. This one shows small vignettes of the children on the beach executed with pencil, watercolor, and what appears to be gouache, which is sort of a heavy watercolor, an opaque watercolor. We've got all of these great scenes, some of them a little bit more sketchy than others. But we noticed that we had seen a number of these compositions that we can recall seeing in larger paintings. So clearly, these are more than just sketches; they're really almost more fully-realized studies. Now, the back of the work is equally intriguing, isn't it?

GUEST:
It's a surprise on the back.

APPRAISER:
It is a surprise. But again, we've got studies of infants that are a little bit atypical of what we think of when we see Potthast. We've got more studies on the side here in blue. And then finally, we've got this fantastic group of children. But it shows just what a draftsman he was. It also shows the thought process that went into how he created the figures. One of these had been appraised.

GUEST:
Yes.

APPRAISER:
Which one was that, do you recall?

GUEST:
This one right here with the sailboats. Back in '74, it was appraised between $2,000 and $3,000.

APPRAISER:
Today, for auction purposes, we would value this painting at $15,000 to $25,000.

GUEST:
Wow, that's wonderful.

APPRAISER:
It is, it's gone up quite a bit.

GUEST:
Oh, that's wonderful.

APPRAISER:
The sketch, the crayon on paper, for auction purposes, we'd value at $6,000 to $8,000.

GUEST:
Oh, my word!

APPRAISER:
Now, how do we value this piece? I'm flipping this over. It would be very important to keep all this together, to not damage the integrity of the work as a whole. But we now have the technology where if one wanted to, even though this is relatively thin, one could subdivide the front and the back and make two boards.

GUEST:
Oh.

APPRAISER:
So if you were looking purely from an economic standpoint, dollars and cents, you might say, "Might it not make more sense to do that?"

GUEST:
Right.

APPRAISER:
Further, some of these are so good in and of themselves, one could literally cut these out of the board and individually frame and mat each and try to sell each if you were a dealer, for example. Just looking at it that way, even some of these small ones would be $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, some less.

GUEST:
Oh, my word.

APPRAISER:
So while we have a little bit of a difference of opinion as to how we would value this in full, and given that there really isn't much by way of a comparable for something like this, for auction purposes, we would say $20,000 to $30,000.

GUEST:
Oh, my word. That's... that's amazing.

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Appraisal Details

Appraiser
David Weiss
Paintings & Drawings, Rugs & Textiles
Freeman's Auctioneers
Philadelphia, PA
Appraised value (2012)
$41,000 Auction – $63,000 Auction
Featured In
Cincinnati, Hour 1 (#1710)
Event
Cincinnati, OH (July 21, 2012)
Category
Paintings & Drawings
Period
19th Century , Impressionism
Form
Painting , Sketch
Material
Crayon , Gouache , Paper , Pencil , Watercolor

Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.

Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."

Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.

Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.

Verbal approximations: The values given by the experts on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW are considered "verbal approximations of value." Technically, an "appraisal" is a legal document, generally for insurance purposes, written by a qualified expert and paid for by the owner of the item. An appraisal usually involves an extensive amount of research to establish authenticity, provenance, composition, method of construction, and other important attributes of a particular object.

Opinion of value: As with all appraisals, the verbal approximations of value given at ROADSHOW events are our experts' opinions formed from their knowledge of antiques and collectibles, market trends, and other factors. Although our valuations are based on research and experience, opinions can, and sometimes do, vary among experts.

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