GUEST: We've actually had this painting probably a little over 20 years. My husband inherited it from his great-aunt, who lived in New York City.
APPRAISER: So do you know who this artist is, have you any idea?
GUEST: No, we have no idea.
APPRAISER: There is a signature on it, but you can't read it. We've tried to decipher, but we can't really tell. And it is quite difficult to read, but I'm a great proponent of saying, if you don't see something on the front, it's always worth having a look at the back.
GUEST: Ah!
APPRAISER: So I sneaked a peek, and let's see whether we can just do this. There was a backboard on it. Thank you.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: So I want to slip this out, excellent.
GUEST: Just pull it out.
APPRAISER: We see, can you read that? It says "Botkin."
GUEST: Botkin?
APPRAISER: Yes. Okay. This is by Henry Botkin.
GUEST: Ah!
APPRAISER: And he was from Boston, originally, he was born in Boston, but he lived most of his life in New York. So I suspect that's where your husband's aunt got it from. He studied there at the Art Students League, and it was really pretty much his home for the rest of his life, although he spent about seven years in Paris in between times. But what was interesting to me is that here we are in Charleston, and in fact he had a connection with Charleston, and that was in 1934, he came to Charleston, and more specifically Folly Beach, and there he worked with his cousin, who you may have heard of, George Gershwin. So George Gershwin, of course, the great American composer was in Folly Beach at that time. And why was he there? He was writing his great opera Porgy and Bess, because both he and his cousin Botkin, Henry Botkin, were very interested in African-American culture, and so while Gershwin was writing it, he was painting the visual counterparts to the opera at that time in '34. And of course the opera came out, I think, in '35, so they were very close in fact, and Botkin taught Gershwin how to paint and encouraged his painting. He helped him form his art collection. So they were very close cousins, and I thought that was a wonderful connection.
GUEST: Absolutely.
APPRAISER: And quite coincidental, you know, that here we are in Charleston and they had worked here. Whether this was painted here or not, one cannot say. This rather louche-looking character in a restaurant, café interior, it's almost as though he's harking back to his days in Paris. So, really nice little painting. It's an oil on canvas, laid down on board, and fairly typical of the work he used to do in the '30s, because he became better known as an abstract painter in the '40s and '50s. Have you any idea about the value of it?
GUEST: We don't, you know. We've had people tell us they think it's of value. We just have absolutely no idea.
APPRAISER: Okay, well, at auction I would feel reasonably comfortable putting an estimate of $3,000 to $5,000 on it. It's a nice piece, I almost feel... you see paintings and you feel they should be worth more.
