1971 Gertrude Morgan God's Greatest Hits Book
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GUEST:
My parents bought that when I was very young, in New Orleans. They liked to collect art and paintings, and they really liked this artist, but they couldn't afford her paintings. So, they found a book that she had painted in and purchased that.
APPRAISER:
Her name was, um, Gertrude Morgan...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...and she was born in Alabama in 1900, and moved to New Orleans in the late '30s.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Women in the Baptist Church were not allowed to preach from the pulpit. So, she had a church, uh, at her home in the Ninth Ward called the Everlasting Gospel Mission, where she would have sermons. Uh, she also had an orphanage at one point. Much of her life was guided by what she said were these revelations that she received from, from God. So, in 1956, she began painting. She met a, uh, art dealer, and he started selling her paintings and promoting her. Right. And in 1970, she had three major shows at three major museums...
GUEST:
Mmm.
APPRAISER:
...along with other Southern folk artists. So, she started to become pretty well-known. And so, this art dealer published this book of, uh, different biblical quotes with her paintings as illustrations. And in some of them, she painted them. The book actually sold 300,000 copies...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...which was a huge amount. You can see that she signed it, and then she painted herself. So, this is the artist, sitting in this green
chair. She always wore white. And the different members of her congregation on the inside of the book. So that makes it special.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
She did about 800 works of art between 1956 and 1973.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
This was, this book was published in 1970. So, a couple of years after this book was published, she stopped making art.
GUEST:
Mm, okay.
APPRAISER:
And, because she thought she'd gotten too famous...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...and that God wanted her to focus on her, her preaching and her spiritual life.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
She died in, uh, New Orleans in 1980.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Do you know what your parents paid for the book?
GUEST:
They said it cost $60. Her paintings started at $350.
APPRAISER:
So, there was one that sold at auction a few, about ten years ago for $1,600.
GUEST:
Mm, oh, wow.
APPRAISER:
And some of her works on paper, which aren't much larger than the, the opened pages of this book, have sold for as, almost $70,000.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
So, I think that this book, illustrated, painted the way it is, is probably worth between $4,000 and $5,000.
GUEST:
Wow. Wow. (giggles) That's great. More than I thought. (laughs)
APPRAISER:
It's really special. She's an artist that a lot of people are very interested in right now.
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