Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Pastel, ca. 1950
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APPRAISER:
So here we have an artist with strong ties to Charleston, but not West Virginia.
GUEST:
South Carolina.
APPRAISER:
South Carolina.
GUEST:
Elizabeth O'Neill Verner was born in Charleston, spent most of her life living there. Her family, when she was a young teenager, sent her to Philadelphia, to the Philadelphia Fine Arts Academy to study art, but she came back to Charleston. Her original medium was etchings, and it was in 1938 she started doing pastels.
APPRAISER:
You've done your homework. I'm impressed.
GUEST:
Thank you.
APPRAISER:
I'm put out of a job. (laughs) I'm gonna correct you on one thing: it would be the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia-- I would know that because I work nearby-- which is the oldest established art school in the United States, a famous institution, and a lot of our leading artists went there, including Elizabeth Verner.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
She studied with Anshutz there, who was one of the leading painters of that time and a very influential teacher. And you mentioned about the pastels, and she started working with pastel after seeing an exhibition by Laura Coombs Hills in Boston, in Massachusetts, and she was another great artist, too. It's a very difficult medium to master. I used to try and I wasn't very good at it. And it's a very fugitive medium, too. It's very easy to get smudged. But she really did a fantastic job, I think.
GUEST:
Well, she's won quite a number of awards and has a South Carolina award named after her that is still presented.
APPRAISER:
And of course, although she had close ties to Charleston, and she was renowned to have said, "I have two great loves in life: "one is art and one is Charleston. I've managed to combine both into one profession." She had very strong ties, but she was in no way parochial, so she went off to Philadelphia, she studied at the Central School in London. She went to Mexico, she traveled Europe, she went to Japan and learned Japanese art. And this is an example, one of her nice pastels, of one of the flower ladies who you would find in Charleston.
GUEST:
And still do.
APPRAISER:
Except the mayor at one point tried to get rid of them, and she was in the forefront of the people who said, "That's not gonna happen." She stopped that happening, because these were also her models. Her husband had died not long...
GUEST:
Both husbands died, one in '25 and one in '35.
APPRAISER:
But she really had to make money, so she needed to be a career artist, and one of the avenues that she explored was doing these flower ladies. What I love about this drawing is that it shows great warmth, affection, and dignity. It's not patronizing in any way. There's a real sensitivity about the way she's depicted, the flower lady's face. And as I say, it's just a lovely study of one of the ladies there, and great color as well. There's great energy and liveliness in the line. So it's a nice example of her work, I think. How did you come by it?
GUEST:
My sister-in-law and my mother-in-law purchased it in Charleston in 1968.
APPRAISER:
Charleston, South...
GUEST:
Charleston, South Carolina. They paid $1,600 for it.
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
Some years later, my niece needed to go to law school, and so my husband and I paid $5,000 for it.
APPRAISER:
And how long ago was that, do you think?
GUEST:
That had to be at least... probably 20 years ago.
APPRAISER:
Okay. These days, I mean, there's a lot of demand for her work. I think at auction, I would probably double that.
GUEST:
Great.
APPRAISER:
So for an auction value or estimate, I would suggest $10,000 to $15,000. I think that would be a comfortable range.
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