Clarence Millet Oil Painting, ca. 1930
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GUEST:
Today I brought a painting that belonged to my parents and hung in their living room throughout my childhood. It's a painting that I'm told is by an artist called Clarence Millet and my parents, who were married in 1938, were very enamored with local artists, and they acquired this painting, I was told, in the French Quarter. This was always my mother's favorite painting, and it's a favorite of mine because my husband and I were married at St. Louis Cathedral.
APPRAISER:
Do you have any idea what your parents may have paid for the painting?
GUEST:
No, but I can't imagine it was much.
APPRAISER:
It is an oil painting by Clarence Millet. It is on a canvas that's been wrapped around board. It is signed in the lower right. He was born in Louisiana, he stayed here most of his life. When he was 17, he did move to New Orleans, and that's when he studied with some Chicago artists named Robert Grafton and Louis Oscar Griffith. They were working in the French Quarter, they had been to Paris and studied with the Impressionists. And that's really where Impressionism kind of…
GUEST:
Oh.
APPRAISER:
…got him interested in painting. Griffith and Grafton both saw that he had talent, and they really encouraged him to study painting, so he went to Tulane. He then went to the Art Students' League in New York. But he came back, and by 1925, he set up a studio in the French Quarter. So your parents probably bought this in the first ten years of his career…
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
…where he was really just painting and selling his paintings out of that studio. And as you mentioned, you thought your parents probably bought it before 1938. So we don't have a date on the painting…
GUEST:
Mh-hmm.
APPRAISER:
…but it's safe to say that it would have been painted somewhere between 1925 and the mid-1930s.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
Now, the frame, I think, is original, so it really mimics the colors in the painting. It certainly works well together. It is Jackson Square. We have the cathedral in the background. We have two ladies in the foreground, looks like it may be after it rained. He really creates a mood. There's kind of a famous quote where he said he wanted to paint the things that he saw and he felt, and let other people experience that same feeling. If we were going to put this painting at auction, the estimate would be $8,000 to $12,000.
GUEST:
Okay. Wow! (chuckling) Well, that's nice. It's not going anywhere, but it's nice to know.
Appraisal Details
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