GUEST: Well, I had a cousin that lived...well, second cousin, that lived in old Louisville. And I had admired these for quite some time, and he told me that if I ever wanted them, to just let him know and he would, you know, let me have them. So I finally decided it was time.
APPRAISER: Now, was anyone in the family ever from the Ohio area?
GUEST: Not that I know of. Most of our people are from Kentucky.
APPRAISER: Well, I believe these to be a pair of Ohio portraits. And they are wonderfully charming portraits. They're a wedding set, and the pair was painted in the 1820s, probably. And I believe these are attributable. We'd need to do more research to actually come up with the painter's name. But they're painted on poplar panel, with a wonderful gray background on them. Also the sitters are very, very innocent. The gentleman is holding a book in one hand and the lady a handkerchief. They're both seated in painted Windsor side chairs. And these chairs help us to date these pictures, as well as the lady's costume and also the little tortoiseshell comb.
GUEST: That's what I always admired about it, it's the little comb, the detail of the comb in there.
APPRAISER: Were they to be put at auction, we'd probably estimate them in the $5,000 to $7,000 range.
GUEST: Oh, okay. Well, they've been down in the basement, so I guess we'll bring them up and hang them on the wall.
APPRAISER: Well, that sounds good. And I hope that when you do hang them on the wall, you'll put them facing each other because they're looking into each other's eyes, and they're just as good as they get for American folk portraiture.
GUEST: That's great.
