APPRAISER: Well, I thought we'd struck the mother lode today when you brought in possibly one of the world's best-known images, "The Blue Boy" by Gainsborough. But there's more to this work than meets the eye.
GUEST: That's right. Two years ago, we'd gone to an antique street market in Niles, which is near Fremont here. My husband collects frames, and this man had just boxes full of frames, and he had gone through them and found this one, and showed it to me. And I thought, "Well, you know, it doesn't even have an old glass in it."
APPRAISER: Right.
GUEST: And so we walked away, and then he decided, "Well, I'm going to go back and get that frame." And so that's what we bought for $40 at the time.
APPRAISER: $40. I'm glad you went back.
GUEST: Yeah, well, I'm glad he did, too, and didn't listen to me. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: Let's peel him away and see what we have underneath. Must have been a surprise when you saw this.
GUEST: Yeah-- several days later, when he went to clean it up a little bit, he took it apart, and that's what he found underneath.
APPRAISER: Right, and we can see this is by the artist Jules Tavernier, the French artist who ended up working in America, and is well known for working in San Francisco. It's a charming little piece by him.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: He came to San Francisco in 1874, I think it was, doing illustrations for Harper's. Loved San Francisco, as many people do, and settled down here, and in fact opened up a studio in Montgomery Street, which became a very popular meeting place for many of the luminaries of that time, including Oscar Wilde.
GUEST: Oh, really?
APPRAISER: He also opened up a studio in Monterey. He was the first artist to open up a studio there. But a bit of a cycle developed. Let's put it this way-- he was no stranger to the bottle. And started running up debts, and got chased out of Monterey. He was back in San Francisco. And he would have been in Monterey around about the time this painting was painted. And we can see that it's signed there and dated 1877.
GUEST: We've always wondered where that scene is.
APPRAISER: We think it may be Carmel.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: He had quite a colorful life, and was referred to as a bohemian of bohemians when he was living here. And finally ended up having to leave and going to Hawaii, after upsetting more people with his drinking and debts, and latterly became famous there for his paintings of volcanoes. Tragically died there when he was only 45 years old.
GUEST: Yeah, he was very young, yeah.
APPRAISER: Thanks to the booze. Charming little piece, a real corker of a painting. I think comfortably at auction this would make $5,000 to $8,000.
GUEST: Good-- that's great. That's a good investment.
