Marc Brown: Oil Portrait Attributed to Joseph Whiting Stock, ca. 1845
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GUEST:
This happens to be the very first portrait that we ever bought.
APPRAISER:
Really?
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
So what year was that?
GUEST:
Uh... 1980-something?
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
We loved her expression. We loved the patterned floor cloth. And especially, we loved the way she was fingering that little satin ribbon on her doll.
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
GUEST:
It made her feel alive to us. We know it's by Joseph Whiting Stock.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
And I've since read a little bit about him, and I know that as a young child, he was working on his farm, and a wagon fell on him and paralyzed him from the waist down.
APPRAISER:
Yes.
GUEST:
And I also know that he kept really good records of his portraits, although, this we don't think is signed anywhere, so we don't know who she is.
APPRAISER:
Yeah, I think we can safely attribute it. It has all the tells of a classic stock child sitting in a painted piece of furniture, this floor cloth.
GUEST:
He loved pattern.
APPRAISER:
Yeah, he loved the colors and the patterns. And this was probably done in the late 1840s.
GUEST:
Huh.
APPRAISER:
And it's an oil on canvas.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
And, uh, you paid in the '80s, do you remember?
GUEST:
It was a little over $6,000.
APPRAISER:
So, I think in today's market, it'd probably be worth somewhere in the $15,000 to $18,000 retail.
GUEST:
Oh.
APPRAISER:
I think you're a collector, so we might talk insurance value, to say $20,000, $25,000 for insurance purposes.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm. Well, that's nice to know.
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
GUEST:
We love her even more.
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