GUEST: About 25 years ago, my husband and I were in Saugatuck, Michigan. We walked in an antique store and I saw this picture. I did not know anything about the artist at that time, but I bought it, and I've enjoyed it ever since.
APPRAISER: Indeed, I can imagine that. Of course, you know right away this is signed. Now, this is in the plate, but it's John George Brown in 1881. John George Brown is one of my favorite painters because what he was doing was celebrating the street children, the kinds of self-made entrepreneurs: the newspaper boys of the American cities. He was celebrating American enterprise. He romanticized them and he loved them, and so there's a lot of love between an artist and his subject coming out of these pictures. But this is a wonderful engraving. It was done by a banknote engraver who was working in New York and Washington. Naturally, with banknote engraving he would have been working in Washington. For art, he would have been working in New York. I have a copy of this print that is signed by both Brown and the engraver.
GUEST: Oh, really?
APPRAISER: And we have $1,600 on that print. But this particular print has an original frame with it, which is a very nice plus. And while, you know, a little bit of paper restoration can be done with the print and the frame can be polished, I would evaluate this at $1,400.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness. I'm real surprised.
APPRAISER: Really?
