Robert Wood Bluebonnets Oil, ca. 1930
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GUEST:
It was my grandparents'. It hung in their home since I can remember. Then it went to my mother. And then it went to me.
APPRAISER:
Where did your grandparents get it?
GUEST:
My grandfather had a storage and moving company in Oklahoma City, and somebody couldn't pay their storage and he got the painting. I think my grandfather got it late '50s, early '60s.
APPRAISER:
Robert Wood was born in England in 1889. He moved to the States by 1910. And throughout his long career and life, he traveled to a lot of different parts of the United States. And in the 1920s, he actually moved to San Antonio. He lived and painted around San Antonio from 1924 to 1941, but he even continued to paint some of these same subjects after he moved away from San Antonio.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
He did move to California later in the '40s, and he's associated with Laguna very strongly because he spent a number of years there and in San Diego. This is an oil on canvas, and I would guess that it might have been painted in the '20s or '30s, although Wood did continue to paint bluebonnet pictures throughout his career. He really was such a popular artist that he couldn't keep up with the demand for his work. So he worked with some publishers and they started to make reproductions or prints of his paintings. There are literally millions of prints of his work. And even though other artists like Julian Onderdonk painted Texas bluebonnets, it was through all these prints of Robert Wood's paintings of Texas that the Bluebonnet School really became popular. He actually finished painting over 5,000 paintings, which is quite a huge number for an artist. And he was very active until the end of his life. Do you have any idea what the value on this might be?
GUEST:
Not on this one, no. I've seen other bluebonnet paintings appraised for around $15,000 to $20,000, but that's all I know.
APPRAISER:
Bluebonnet subject matters for Wood are really amongst his most desirable works. So I think if you were to have this in a retail gallery, the asking price would be around $50,000.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
Yes.
GUEST:
Wow. Okay.
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