GUEST: We purchased this at an open house. An artist was selling some of her own artwork, and some of her collection, and she had this available, and my wife and I loved it immediately, and we bought it right away. We just thought it was such a sweet painting. The woman who we purchased it from, this was the first painting that she bought when she started her art career in New York.
APPRAISER: Bessie Lowenhaupt is one of my favorite artists. I'm from St. Louis, as was she.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: So it was a real treat to see this come in. Bessie Lowenhaupt was born in 1881 in Mount Vernon, Indiana. She studied at the Chicago Art Institute. She got married and had five children, and didn't become a practicing artist, really, until she was 75 years old. The painting is oil on canvas, certainly dated circa 1960. Characteristic of her paintings is the balance between abstraction and reality, and also the planes of color that she would use to create this harmonious balance in her compositions. She also would use one dominant color in her artwork.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And she called that the master of ceremonies.
GUEST: (chuckles) Okay.
APPRAISER: There were always muted tones-- grays, browns, earth tones-- but that was characteristic of her work. She had only one commercial exhibit, in 1968, at the end of her life. Uh, that was the year that she died. It was at Martin Schweig Galleries in St. Louis. She didn't ever sign her paintings, because she felt that that was presumptuous.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And she often didn't title her paintings. But, uh, you have two titles, in fact...
GUEST: Two titles.
APPRAISER: ...on the back of this canvas. This one, on the original tag on the back, with her address, is titled "Girl Standing for a Fitting," but it was titled a, again, and what was the title?
GUEST: One... Right. "Woman Descending Stairs."
APPRAISER: Maybe the reason she didn't want to title her work is because she wanted the viewer to take their own idea away from the experience.
GUEST: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Was this the frame that you bought it in?
GUEST: We had this recently reframed. There wasn't a right angle on the frame. It was sort of a, a weird configuration.
APPRAISER: She always created her own frames. (chuckles) She would go to a furniture store and pick up scraps of lumber. Poplar wood is what she would use, and they would always be very thin strips.
GUEST: Absolutely.
APPRAISER: And sometimes she would paint them to go with the painting. I think something like this, easily, at auction, would sell between $4,000 and $6,000.
GUEST: That's great, thank you, I appreciate that. It's certainly more than we paid for it.
APPRAISER: Yeah, do you mind divulging that price?
GUEST: Uh, we paid $400 for it.
APPRAISER: Wow.
GUEST: Yeah, about a dozen years ago.
APPRAISER: I was I was there!
GUEST: Yeah. (both laugh)
APPRAISER: If you had the original frame, it might make a slight difference.
