GUEST: This was in my grandmother's house in Saginaw, Michigan, for a bunch of years. Then it was in my mother's house for a bunch of years, and now it's been in our house for a bunch of years.
APPRAISER: Oh, my goodness.
GUEST: So other than knowing who it's painted by, we don't know anything else about it.
APPRAISER: The artist, Dwight Tryon, is probably one of the first major Tonalists in the United States.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: And he was very much influenced by the Barbizon School of painters in France. So he was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1849. Tryon was very talented at an early age, and he was primarily self-taught until he went to Paris in the 1870s.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And there, he studied at the …école des Beaux-Arts. And in 1881, he had the distinction of showing at the Paris Salon, which was quite an honor for an American artist, and then he moves to New York. And while he's in New York, he establishes a studio, and he meets a very famous art collector and industrialist named Charles Freer, who was from Detroit.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And Freer liked his work so much, he commissioned Tryon to do a series of landscapes for his home. Today, those paintings are at the Freer Gallery in Washington, DC. He also was supported by another important patron named Thomas B. Clarke, who was also an industrialist. And Clarke was responsible for really making American art popular, because up to that point in the 19th century, most Americans were collecting European art. So he had a very, very good, strong patronage. In 1885, he actually becomes an art professor at Smith College, and he stays at Smith close to his death in 1925.
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: Now, his early work is very somber and a little bit more monochromatic in its tonality, very much reflecting the Barbizon School. By the 1890s-- and as you can see here, the painting was done in 1916-- he emerges out of that somberness into a very brilliant palette. And you can see here the bright blues and reds, and how vibrant it is.
GUEST: That's why we like it.
APPRAISER: And he also began focusing on pastels rather than oils, and this is actually a pastel.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: And it's, of course, covered by glass. The title of it is "October Morning," which is written on the back. If this were offered today in a gallery, the sale price would be in the range of $15,000.
GUEST: Wow, that's nice. That's very nice.
APPRAISER: What's very interesting, however, is that the market for American art, overall, has started to...
GUEST: Drop, or...?
APPRAISER: Has dropped since about 2008.
GUEST: Wow, okay.
APPRAISER: And, in the past, there always were peaks and valleys of... You know, it would usually be in a five-year period, but it's been much longer than that. And so, unfortunately, a lot of the Tonalists, including Tryon's work, has fallen off favor. If this had been for sale in a gallery before 2008, it would probably be more in the $30,000 range.
GUEST: Well.
APPRAISER: And we hope it'll come back.
GUEST: Yeah, we just have it because we like it.
