Carl Reichert Dog Portrait, ca. 1900
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APPRAISER:
You've had this painting for a fairly long time, you said.
GUEST:
About 20 years.
APPRAISER:
About 20 years?
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
And where did you buy it?
GUEST:
Uh, I bought it at a local auction here in town.
APPRAISER:
Uh-huh. Just an estate sale?
GUEST:
Just, yeah, it was an, out of an estate.
APPRAISER:
Uh-huh.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
Did you pay a lot of money for it?
GUEST:
Uh, at the time, uh, it was $100.
APPRAISER:
The artist is, is, is Carl Reichert, it's very clear. It shows that it's C. Reichert. Carl Reichert is an Austrian artist. Um, and he's a, uh, he, a specialist, primarily in animals, and specifically dogs. Um, most of his paintings focus around, around animals, and they're mostly that small format. Reichert has two really distinct kinds of paintings. One type is the anecdotal painting, and that will tell a story, or it's, it's sometimes humorous. You'll have dogs chasing cats or parrots and, and, and the house being torn up by them. And then there's the other type, which is what you have here, is the purebred dog portrait. Now, the purebred dog portrait in, in the 19th century is really more of an English kind of, uh, uh, domain. And generally in the English ones, they show the entire dog.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Because they're trying to show the confirmation, the, the, uh, the legs, the tail, the, the size and all of that-- proportions. But Reichert focuses primarily just on the faces and the facial expressions. Do you have a dog like this at all, or...?
GUEST:
No, no, no.
APPRAISER:
You don't, okay. Well, he, he's, he's a Great Dane, um, obviously. And I love the, the, the blue of the eyes here, the great, great color that, that you pick up. Um, and it's just somebody's specific dog. It was painted probably for a commission as you'd have a portrait of a family member. But the thing that I, I really like about this painting is the collar. This is a great illustration of a 19th-century dog collar. These collars themselves today are collectible. If you had that collar, it could be as much as, uh, $1,000 for just the collar.
GUEST:
I see.
APPRAISER:
You paid $100, you say. Good deal. Uh, a painting like this by Reichert, I'd probably put an estimate of about $4,000 to $6,000 on it.
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