APPRAISER: You've brought in a very interesting painting today, and it's by...?

GUEST: Mr. Benton.

APPRAISER: Thomas Hart Benton. Your family had a nice association with the artist.

GUEST: Basically when the two families were newlyweds, my father and mother and Thomas and his wife, they lived in an apartment complex together in Kansas City, Missouri.

APPRAISER: Uh-huh.

GUEST: They got to know one another quite well. They lived across the aisle. We associated with them, I think, until Mr. Benton died. I know that we visited them occasionally in Martha's Vineyard over the summer back in the early '50s.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm, what was he like?

GUEST: Well, he was an interesting fellow. You know, he was very pleasant. I remember his wife better than I do him.

APPRAISER: Uh-huh.

GUEST: She was a very jovial individual.

APPRAISER: And I understand he was a little bit... maybe shyer or more reclusive.

GUEST: I think, yeah. He kind of stuck to his studio. This one was a gift from Mr. Benton. My father was walking through his studio, and Mr. Benton gave him full rein to pick an object, and he picked this. When my wife and I got married in '68, I guess my wife asked my mother for it, and she gave it to us.

APPRAISER: Most people don't realize that Benton lived as late as 1975...

GUEST: I didn't know that either.

APPRAISER: ...and was painting almost until that time. He was born in Missouri, in the Ozarks area, in 1889. Was well trained. He went to the Art Institute of Chicago, and he studied in Paris. And after serving in the military, he went to New York. And he stayed in New York until about 1935, when we went back to Kansas City. Benton, of course, is one of the most prominent American artists of the 20th century, and he is considered an American regionalist, or also one of the premier artists of what's called the American scene. And so he fits into the same group as Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry. But Benton is probably the best known of the group. He was in the earlier days known mostly, in the '30s, '40s, '50s in painting scenes, like scenes of farmland in Missouri or out West. And he also painted in the South. He painted a lot in Martha's Vineyard. He did do a lot of still lifes, and he did do a few abstractions as well. And many of his early abstractions, which were done in the 1920s, were actually, I think, destroyed in a fire.

GUEST: Well, I don't know when this was exactly done. I was probably about ten years old when... so it had to be early '50s when we got it. He called it a study.

APPRAISER: It's very reminiscent of a lot of his still lifes. Now, of course, the still lifes are more representational, with flowers and sometimes fruit, but they're very colorful, and they're usually done in an upward thrust, like you see here. This one is very abstract, almost surreal or futuristic in its presentation, and the colors are just absolutely stunning. And in the '40s and '50s, he really was a master at using this brilliant palette. So in terms of dating it, it's not for sure, but I would judge it probably was done around the time that your parents got it.

GUEST: I just remember my father picking it out, he saying something to the effect that, "You really want that?"

APPRAISER: (laughing)

GUEST: And my father absolutely insisted. And he signed it and gave it to him.

APPRAISER: Well, that's great, and of course, we see the signature right here, "Benton." The painting's done on tin. The tin is a bit thinner and larger than what we normally see. He also enjoyed the texture of tin, because it's very smooth, and then he could build upthe surface. And you can see in this painting how nice the impasto or the brushwork is. It's really built up, and it has quite a lot of dimension, which makes it somewhat sculptural. Did you have the frame made, or...

GUEST: My wife had it framed. It's only been framed for about 20 years.

APPRAISER: Oh, my goodness. Well, how did your parents display it?

GUEST: They really didn't.

APPRAISER: Oh, they didn't? I think that if this were in a gallery, it could be sold in the range of $125,000.

GUEST: Okay. Wow. I have to tell you, maybe I've got to get a couch here. But wow, that's very interesting.