GUEST: The sitter's my mother. This is 1924, she was seven years old, it's in France, and she was going to school there at the time. She was there with her family. Her father came over to do the reconstruction after World War I-- he was a lumberman, and the family was over there, living in France.
APPRAISER: It's a wonderful bronze, such an appealing subject. The artist has signed it here, it's Paul Troubetzkoy, who was a bit of a fairly colorful character. It's signed and dated 1924 and has a foundry mark here, it's a Paris foundry.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And he was born in Italy, the second son of a Russian prince, and his mother was an American lyric singer.
GUEST: Really? Interesting.
APPRAISER: And it seemed that he was always ahead of conflict. He moved from Russia to France in 1905.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: Then he left France to come to America.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: And then went back to France. He did a whole variety of subjects. He did animal, um, topics.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: He did famous personalities, politicians of the time, intellectual thinkers.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Authors and illustrators. But his real, flourishing part of his career was doing society portraits.
GUEST: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
APPRAISER: A lot of artists earn their living traveling in high society.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: And so there were lots of elegant men and women that had their portraits done.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And obviously, these sort of charming young children, as well.
GUEST: Wow. Well, it's so fascinating to hear what you say, because it's just been my mom, you know, in her house, and I, you know, never really thought about it.
APPRAISER: Some of the figures that have come up on the market tend to be less personal in nature and more sort of recognizable.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: But it still has a considerable value. And if you had to find something by this artist of a comparable scale, you'd expect to pay, in a retail price, in the $20,000 range.
GUEST: Wow, wow.
APPRAISER: So it's good. You've got a very valuable piece.
GUEST: Wow.
