GUEST: It's by Max Weber, and my husband gave it to me in 1997. He bought it at the Arkansas Art Center at a collectors' show, and part of the proceeds were a donation.
APPRAISER: And what did he pay for it?
GUEST: About $25,000.
APPRAISER: Max Weber was one of the most important of the American modern painters. He was born in 1881 and died in 1961. Earlier in his career, he worked in a more representational style, but after going to Paris before the 1910s, he began to paint in a more symbolist style. This is a very rare pastel from 1916. He only worked in this particular style for a very short time. Very minimal, suggestive still lifes. After this period in his career, he really did move on almost exclusively to figurative and cubist representational style. This particular subject doesn't come up very often; it's usually the more cubist works from a little bit later in his career. If you were going to try and buy this at a gallery in New York, let's say, where his estate is represented, you might have to pay somewhere between $35,000 or $45,000 in today's marketplace.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: Yes, that's true.
GUEST: Good!
