GUEST: It was a painting done by my great-great-aunt when she was visiting Tunisia. In her 30s, she decided to become a painter, or she went to art school in Chicago and then traveled abroad to Europe and North Africa.
APPRAISER: So this painting has been in your family for a while, then?
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Okay. And, let's talk about your great-great-aunt.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And here is a picture of her right here. Her name was Grace Ravlin, and she is actually a very well-known artist. She was born in the 1870s, and she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and later with William Merritt Chase. And then she left for Europe, which a lot of female artists were doing right around 1906.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And she left specifically for France, but she was traveling all over Europe, and from 1906 through about 1921 she was painting there, but she was also traveling a lot. What's interesting about her, specifically, compared with a lot of the other female artists who were going to Europe, a lot of them went there to study a little bit, and then came back. But your great-great-aunt, she was an intrepid person. She was traveling all over. She was going to places like Tangiers, Morocco, Egypt, by herself, as well, which, we can imagine, at that time, was not exactly the most common thing to do.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Right around the time of the war, she went to Europe to be a nurse. She was traveling back and forth, but in 1918, she did go-- she was working for the American Red Cross, and then she went over to Tunisia again around 1919.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Now, this painting, lower left, is dated 1920. It probably was made in Gabès in Tunisia, which is a town on the coast. This is an oil painting on canvas, and it appears to have been laid down on board, which was a typical thing that was done. She was an accomplished artist, with training from a lot of important artists, as well, so it shows this atmospheric quality to it. This wonderful composition, this bringing down to color forms, this progressiveness in her painting, it wasn't just representational, it was progressive. She was winning a lot of awards, so she was a known quantity. She had gone to Europe, but she would also go to the Southwest. Now, today, she's very well-celebrated in the United States for her Southwest paintings. But these paintings of Tunisia and Orientalist paintings are also in high demand, specifically because Orientalism is in high demand. And Orientalism is the paintings of Arab scenes, Bedouin scenes, things that were exotic, and she described herself as an ethnographic painter.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: If I was going to put this painting at auction, a conservative auction estimate would $15,000 to $20,000.
GUEST: Oh, cool. That's wonderful news.
