Extraordinary Find: 1945 Gertrude Abercrombie Surrealist Painting
HOST: Appraiser Aaron Bastian had a truly surreal experience at the Sacramento ROADSHOW in 2019, proving that bigger is not always better in works of art, especially when it came to this peculiar pocket-sized painting.
APPRAISER: About halfway through the day, a very small painting came to the table, and it initially came to a colleague of mine, Alan Fausel. Alan knows that I like the weird stuff, and this definitely qualified.
GUEST: When I was a little kid, my parents got it at a yard sale in Chicago. They saw this there for five dollars, and they just had to get it.
APPRAISER: Do you know when your parents bought it?
GUESET: Well, I was about one at the time, so I think, like '98, '99.
APPRAISER: Well, the painting is by an artist named, uh, Gertrude Abercrombie. It's signed and dated 1945. She is known as a... a bit of a Bohemian artist, a Surrealist, and she worked in Chicago, so...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Makes sense that you would find it there. She's known for these Surrealist paintings. She considered them somewhat of a self-portrait. And we know that. She said that, I'm not making it up.
(both chuckle)
APPRAISER: In this particular painting, we can see the owl, and we also have the cup on the table there, the proverbial witch's brew.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: She had trouble with alcohol as well, so I-I think we see aspects of her vision of herself as kind of a, a witch, a character outside of, uh, the normal.
GUEST: That's really interesting.
APPRAISER: This particular work is very unique to... her vision, that-that sort of surrealism. It's very personal. It reflects things that she thought about herself, things that were important to her, things that she thought symbolized her. She felt like she looked like a witch. She exaggerated that by dressing sometimes like a witch. I mean, the whole nine yards.
APPRAISER: I think at auction, even though it's only four by five inches, we would give it an estimate of $8,000 to $12,000.
GUEST: Wow, wow. Th-that's a lot.
APPRAISER: More than five. (laughs)
GUEST: That's... I would-- I would've guessed like maybe $35.
APPRAISER: Yeah.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Her work is quite rare, and it's also on a major upswing.
GUEST: I don't surprise easily, but...(chuckling). I was pretty surprised.
APPRAISER: So, we taped the show in 2019, and in 2020, Benjamin reached back out to me. He decided that he wanted to sell it. He had some concerns about the work, uh, possibly being destroyed in a wildfire. He asked me if I could help find it a home in an auction setting, and I said, absolutely.
GUEST: The auction ended up taking place online in November of 2020. We all kind of, like, gathered in the living room of my parents' house, kind of all gathered around the TV. We connected a computer to it, and then watched it through there.
APPRAISER: There was a lot of interest in the work. A number of bidders took part in the process, and, uh, ultimately, at the end of the day, it made $22,000. I can't tell you who bought the one in Bonhams in New York. They're almost always sold anonymously and they're bought anonymously. Subsequent to the sale of the work, there was a show at the, uh, Carnegie in 2021, of-- of just Gertrude Abercrombie's work, a solo show, which was a big deal, and that's just increased her fame. She was in a system where women were not going to get the same chance to have shows in galleries and museums. And so, it took a while for everybody to maybe come around to the quality of the work, and we're seeing the results at auction go up and up and up and up.
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Extraordinary Finds 3
Revisit remarkable ROADSHOW finds whose stories didn’t stop even after we yelled "Cut!"
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.
Verbal approximations: The values given by the experts on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW are considered "verbal approximations of value." Technically, an "appraisal" is a legal document, generally for insurance purposes, written by a qualified expert and paid for by the owner of the item. An appraisal usually involves an extensive amount of research to establish authenticity, provenance, composition, method of construction, and other important attributes of a particular object.
Opinion of value: As with all appraisals, the verbal approximations of value given at ROADSHOW events are our experts' opinions formed from their knowledge of antiques and collectibles, market trends, and other factors. Although our valuations are based on research and experience, opinions can, and sometimes do, vary among experts.
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