1903 Immigrant Art
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GUEST:
It was my father's cousin's mother who actually painted these.
APPRAISER:
Right. You brought a picture of her?
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
There she is, that's your great-great-aunt.
GUEST:
There's six of them that we know exist, and we were thinking, who would paint such a large thing? Maybe they were commissioned. We don't know.
APPRAISER:
Right-- well, what you have is something that's known sort of as immigrant art, a type of art that's done by painters who are more of a type of painter that's a house painter, where they are trained to paint marble-- fake marble, fake wood grains, and things like that. And what these paintings are are actual decorations for buildings. You see the most out here in California and Oregon and out in the West. So it's an important part of the tradition of the people who came to America in the 1850s, 1860s. The value of these, I would say, about $300 to $500 apiece.
GUEST:
Really. That's interesting to know.
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