Edmund Tarbell Drawing, ca. 1925
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GUEST:
I received it about ten years ago as a gift. I work for an airline here, and being that Lindbergh originally did some of our routes...
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
That's what we thought it might have been.
APPRAISER:
So you thought that the subject of the portrait was Charles Lindbergh?
GUEST:
Correct.
APPRAISER:
Do you know anything about the artist, Edmund Tarbell?
GUEST:
Nothing at all.
APPRAISER:
Well, let me tell you a little bit about the artist first, and then we'll talk about the subject. Tarbell was a Boston painter who had studied in France and was also a teacher, but in Boston he was best known for painting outdoor scenes with figures as well as interior scenes of his family. Obviously a portrait like this might have been done as a commission, artists often would paint portraits to raise money or as just routine income. Tarbell was also a member of what was called the Ten Artists, Ten American Artists, and that included major artists like William Merritt Chase, and Frank Benson. So, he was really part of a very stellar group of painters. Now in terms of the actual sitter here, it's often very difficult to tell who a particular person is, and in this case, the value of this object is really going to depend on if it is in fact Lindbergh. I actually checked with a couple of colleagues, who are familiar from Lindbergh from mostly photographic images, and some of them were a bit skeptical as to whether this is actually Lindbergh. And the reason being, that the hairline apparently is a bit too receded and his hair is very fly-away. So, either he was having a bad hair day, or as my colleagues might say, this perhaps is not Lindbergh, because he was very fastidious in the way he presented himself and his hairstyle. The condition of the charcoal drawing is very well rendered, very lushly done with charcoal. Tarbell is a well-known artist, his oil paintings can make into the seven figure range, so he's quite desirable. A charcoal drawing like this of a generic man would be evaluated somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 to $5,000. And if this were a portrait of Lindbergh, we would probably evaluate it in the neighborhood of $15,000 to $25,000.
GUEST:
Wonderful.
APPRAISER:
So it's well worth doing some research.
GUEST:
Wonderful, thank you.
APPRAISER:
You're welcome.
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