Edward Dufner Hazy Morning Oil, ca. 1920
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GUEST:
It was my grandparents' painting. My grandfather bought a house in Shaker Heights, on South Park. It was a pretty big house. He got it on a foreclosure. My grandmother needed to put a lot of paintings on the walls, 'cause it was a big house. So I think in the late '40s, she went-- early '50s-- she went shopping and bought a whole bunch of different paintings.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
A lot of 'em very nice.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
This is one of 'em.
APPRAISER:
Any idea what she paid for it?
GUEST:
No, no idea. After they passed away, my one aunt came to own this painting. And then, uh, when she sold her house, uh, she gave it to me.
APPRAISER:
When did it come to you?
GUEST:
Uh, just this year.
APPRAISER:
So the work is by Edward Dufner. Dufner was born in 1872, and had a long and prolific life, and died in 1957. And Dufner grew up in and around Buffalo, New York. At the age of 15, he studied at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. So he was very precocious in his youth, and did so well there that he actually earned an Albright scholarship. And that scholarship allowed him to travel to New York City in 1893. There, he studied at the Art Students League, which is one of the prominent places for American artists to study at the end of the 19th century. After that, he went to the other important place to study, which is Paris. Every American artist from the late 19th century, or virtually every, ends up going to Paris to study. It's to sort of get your street creds. Everybody thinks much more of you, and you can charge more for your paintings. He went to the Académie Julian, and was actually overseas for about five years. And at that time, he also studied with Whistler. When he came back, he went first to Buffalo, and his style was fairly Tonalist. And by about 1907, he was in New Jersey, and his paintings started to change. He purportedly saw an exhibition of Willard Metcalf paintings, who painted bright, light, American Impressionist pictures. And that's when his style changed to this. Today, when we think of Dufner, this is the sort of style we think of. We think of light-filled and bright. He became known as the painter of sunshine. And this is the iconic subject matter. What people want are the images of young girls, maybe with a mother, sitting in dappled sunlight by the edge of a lake, maybe with swans or ducks swimming in the distance. And, I mean, you have every single possible element. He creates these beautiful oil paintings on canvas, as you're seeing here. Uh, and this is a fairly large example. Also going for it-- this is probably the original frame. Probably this and the painting are from the early 1920s. He really painted like this throughout the rest of his life. And this is just what you look for when you, when you look for a Dufner. If I were to put this through at auction, I would estimate it at $15,000 to $25,000.
GUEST:
Okay, not bad.
APPRAISER:
He did these quite a bit. They're eye candy, they're beautiful.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
So they were tremendously popular.
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