1910 Bertha Schrader Oil Painting
GUEST: My grandmother was Norwegian, but one of her sisters married the artist, and I believe he was German. But I don't know, really, anything about him.
APPRAISER: What about the painting itself? Do you know where that is?
GUEST: It originally was in a very ugly yellow frame. And when I had it reframed, we took off the back, and it said on the back, by the artist, "Dresden." And that really is about all I know, the fact that the-the painter was related to me, so...
APPRAISER: And-and who was the painter?
GUEST: B. Schrader, and I think he married my grandmother's sister, so it would be my great-uncle. My father wrote on the back of the painting, too, that information, so that we'd always remember.
APPRAISER: It does appear to be Dresden. It's a beautiful painting. It's a nice summer day, a beautiful garden. And it's done in what we call a sort of pointillist style.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: This is where the artist used little dabs of color all through the, uh, the painting. You can just look down in this area. It's not just one color; you have this-this shadow here.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: This purple shadow, but it's broken up into little lavenders, and some purples and ochres. It brings a liveliness to it, the painting jumps out at you because of all these little breaks of color. The thing about it... I say this nice German view, and you have this family history, but I think you might want to take that back off afterwards and-and review it.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: So I've looked at this and I-I've looked at the name down here. There is a B. Schrader who does pointillist works in Dresden.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Except it's not your uncle.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Or great-uncle. It's a Bertha Schrader. It's a woman artist.
GUEST: Okay. Wow.
APPRAISER: Who, uh, lived from 1845 to 1920 and practiced in Dresden and did views of the Elbe, and this is very much her style. I think it's a fabulous painting. And the fact that it's just so alive, just so colorful. Um, I think it could stand a slight cleaning. If you look at it, there's some surface dirt on there. Have you ever had it valued, when you had it framed, at all?
GUEST: I-I haven't had it appraised, but I had an appraiser come to my house to look at another painting that we had who-- that I thought was valuable. And he looked at that and said, "Oh, it's really not worth anything." And he turned around and saw this on my wall and said, "That, however, really should be in a period frame, not in this ugly yellow frame. And it's actually worth more money." But he said without being able to research the artist, he didn't know how much.
APPRAISER: There are very few records for this artist-- it's not a household name, even in Germany-- about ten records. I would give an auction estimate of $20,000 to $30,000 for this.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: I have seen others that have come up for auction-- which are not as nice as this-- have made in the $30,000 range.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: So I can see with an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000, I can see it surpassing that if this were to go to auction.
GUEST: That's wonderful. I had no idea that it was that valuable.
$20,000 - $30,000 Auction
$20,000 - $30,000 Auction
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Understanding Our Appraisals
Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.
Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.
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