GUEST: I was watching ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, and in the Feedback Booth, a gentleman stated that he found out his Édouard Cortès was a fake and a light bulb went off. And I ran downstairs, and sure enough, this painting that had been hanging on our wall for 40 years said “Édouard Cortès."
APPRAISER: And who was it who owned it originally? Was it your parents?
GUEST: Grandparents, yes. Right. And they were both artists.
APPRAISER: They were both painters. And did they paint in Paris at all, do you know?
GUEST: I don't believe so-- they vacationed there. They brought home things that they liked and enjoyed, so...
APPRAISER: What do you know about the artist?
GUEST: I just found his bio on the internet, and he was best known for his Parisian street scenes. He was born in 1882 and died in 1969.
APPRAISER: So you've done your research, I commend you. That's absolutely correct. He was born quite near, near to Paris. His father, in fact, was a Spanish court painter, and the artist was based in Paris, and that's where he would have painted this. And he made Paris pretty much his subject matter from about 1900 onwards, till, until his death. Some people have criticized him in the past for being perhaps a little too prolific and, and even formulaic, because many of his paintings are exactly this kind of subject. Now, there is a way that can help us to identify whether in fact it is by the artist. Do, do you know what that is?
GUEST: No, I don't.
APPRAISER: What he used to do was, he would take a little pin and he would stick it in the canvas. And he would do that to establish the vanishing point, to determine the perspective in, in, in the painting and in the drawing. So let's see if we can find a little pinhole. Yeah, a little pinprick right here. So it could be good news. Do you see that?
GUEST: Yes, I do. I thought it was a flaw.
APPRAISER: No. If you look at the lines, they all converge and come to this point. Now, that, of course, is not conclusive. There's a gallery in New York and there's another gentleman who will authenticate his works. But I think there's no question that this work is, in fact, by Édouard Cortès. And we do see a lot of them that aren't right-- it's very well done. You've got these wonderful light sources. You see the reflections on, on the, the road in the foreground. He worked on similarly sized canvases. This one's about 18x22-- he did smaller ones. For an 18x22-inch canvas, at auction, that should be worth $30,000 to $50,000.
GUEST: Oh. You've got to be kidding me. $30,000 to $50,000?
APPRAISER: $30,000 to $50,000. I would feel very confident in saying that. And in fact...
GUEST: That's...
APPRAISER: ...I would expect it to make probably the upper, the upper reaches of that estimate, $40,000 or $50,000.
GUEST: Wow. That's absolutely wonderful. Wow.
APPRAISER: (chuckles)
GUEST: That's really exciting.
APPRAISER: I hope those are tears of joy, by the way.
GUEST: (chuckling): They are tears of joy!
GUEST AND APPRAISER: (laughs)
