Charles Schreyvogel "A Lone Horse" Oil, ca. 1900
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GUEST:
This has been in my husband's family for many years. It was in the possession of my mother-in-law. It was hanging in the house where my husband grew up.
APPRAISER:
Oh, how neat.
GUEST:
I don't know when she acquired it, but the linkage is that her grandmother was the relationship to the wife of Schreyvogel.
APPRAISER:
Oh, I see.
GUEST:
Because it's a horse, my mother-in-law would refer to it as "the work horse." (chuckles)
APPRAISER:
Well, of course, Charles Schreyvogel was a very important Western artist. He was known for painting frontier, and particularly the cavalry. He was born in New York of German immigrant parents in 1861. And he was very artistic from an early age. And in this youth, he actually was a pipe carver, a goldsmith, and a lithographer. And at some point, a group of patrons saw his talent and decided to pay for his way to go to Munich to study in art school. And so he did that for about three years. And when he came back to the United States, he was very infatuated with the West. And he couldn't afford to go out West at that time, so he would go to Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, and he would model his works on those. But, finally, in the 1890s, he raised enough money to be able to go out West, and he went to Colorado and Arizona, primarily. And that was around the time I think he married his wife. He was not able to sell many of the paintings that he did out West initially, and so he did portrait miniatures to make money in order to support himself and his family. It wasn't until about 1901 when he won acclaim with one of his sculptures at the National Academy of Design in New York. And it was at that point his work was recognized, which was really quite a coup for him. Now he was both a painter and a sculptor. He really painted very few oils. He painted actually, I think, under a hundred in number. He was Remington's chief rival. He had quite a renown from that, and after Remington died in 1909, Schreyvogel became the premier Western painter until he died in 1912. It's difficult to say exactly what year this was painted, but I would say probably right around the turn of the century. Now in terms of the appraisal that you mentioned, how long ago was it?
GUEST:
That was done some time between 2010 and 2016.
APPRAISER:
Okay. How was it valued?
GUEST:
They told me-- I wasn't with them-- that it was... $20,000.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, I think they were a bit low in their assessment. The artist is very rare in terms of the amount of work that he did, particularly in painting. His work is highly desirable among Western collectors. And a painting like this, if it were in a gallery, would most likely sell in the range of $75,000.
GUEST:
Wow. (chuckles) No, really?
APPRAISER:
Well, his work is... his work is just so special. And this is so beautiful, plus you have the wonderful provenance. I mean it's been in the same family ever since it was painted, and that makes it very enticing for collectors.
GUEST:
This is wonderful. I can't tell you how overwhelmed I am with this. Oh... It's really wonderful.
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