1880 George Vicat Cole Landscape Oil
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GUEST:
It was given to my girlfriend and I as a housewarming present from her father. He purchased it in December, I guess, from a man who purchased it from the widow of a man who bought it in the late '50s here in Milwaukee, actually.
APPRAISER:
So it's been in Milwaukee since the late 1950s?
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
Do you know anything about the artist of this picture?
GUEST:
I know that he has paintings in some other galleries around the world. He has some in a gallery in Sydney, Australia, and a gallery in London.
APPRAISER:
George Vicat Cole was a prolific English landscape painter in the 19th century. His views of these pastoral English scenes-- haying, in this case-- are extremely popular because they are just typical examples of this lovely, beautiful English lifestyle that has been lost forever. He generally signed, as you see there, in red. He's also dated the picture. You can see it's dated 1880. What's particularly interesting to me and caught my eye when you brought this in because I saw the back of the picture before I saw the front of it, and I'm going to show you here-- is this label, which is the gallery label from the gallery you were speaking of. This is a typical label from a gallery in London called Frost & Reed with the distinctive "F.R." on it and the information about their artist. They've been using the same type of label for decades and decades and decades. And it's usually a pretty good indication that you're going to see a kind of nice English picture when you see that label because they're a very good gallery. They handled a lot of Cole's work. Can I ask how much your girlfriend's father paid for the picture?
GUEST:
About $250.
APPRAISER:
Okay, I think you made a very good buy because in fact, at auction I think today this picture would probably sell for between $4,000 and $6,000.
GUEST:
Excellent.
APPRAISER:
Not a bad investment for a few hundred dollars and a very nice housewarming present, I must say.
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