1835 Francis Calcraft Turner Painting
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GUEST:
At the time, my mother was looking for a baby grand piano for my sister-- she was learning how to play the piano-- and it happens to be that a friend of the family had to clean out a lady's apartment who'd just passed away, so along with the piano came the painting.
APPRAISER:
And where was this?
GUEST:
In Manhattan, actually.
APPRAISER:
Well, your painting is by Francis Calcraft Turner. You may have noticed, in the lower left is a signature, and it's dated 1835. This is a pointer, not the pointer that you'd find today because they've been bred far differently since, but the British were very proud of their animals, and they were the first to develop animal husbandry as a science. One lovely aspect of it is over in the right-hand side, you have a nice landscape in the background. The painting has a label on its reverse, which is the label of Arthur Ackerman & Sons, which was a famous sporting dealer, and they dealt with sporting pictures, and that's kind of wonderful to have that. This painting has some condition issues. A colleague of mine didn't like the condition. It doesn't bother me so much, because I think you'll find that cracking that you see, or hazing, is only in the varnish, and I think when it's clean, that craquelure will disappear. It's a lovely picture, which I think probably would bring somewhere between $12,000 and $16,000...
GUEST:
Wow!
APPRAISER:
...because it will need a cleaning first. The last painting of about this size brought $17,000 in 1997.
Appraisal Details
Current Appraised Value: $8,000 - $12,000 (Decreased)
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