GUEST: I brought a painting. It's my mom's, it's been in our house forever. A friend of hers, his grandfather was a doctor, and so sometimes people couldn't pay and I guess they gave him art. You know, the bartering system. And the grandmother took a liking to my mom, and so he gave her some of her paintings. I really don't know much about it, but it's one of my favorite paintings that she has.
APPRAISER: Well, the artist is Chang Yu Sanyu, and he mostly is known by just Sanyu. He was a Chinese- French artist. He was born in China. His family owned one of the biggest silk weaving mills there. And they were so wealthy that his brother who ran the mill, who was actually 37 years older than him, really took a liking to him, saw that he had a talent for art and basically paid for him to stay home and learn how to draw, paint, and do calligraphy. And in 1921, he went to France, and he was really enamored by the exotic world of life drawing from models. And so he put out about 2,000 of these drawings of female nudes, all done from life right there with the model right in front of him.
GUEST: And in France?
APPRAISER: While he was in France. And he did almost all of these with Chinese ink and brush, which is the same way that he did calligraphy. So there's a real fluidity to his work. He was able oftentimes to capture these figures in just a few brushstrokes. This one's really special because it is that ink on paper, but it also has the addition of the red pigment, which is a watercolor. In an auction today, an estimate for this drawing would be $50,000 to $75,000.
GUEST: Wow. Okay, great, that's great. My mom will be really happy to hear that.
