GUEST: I acquired this piece for free from an online marketplace. A gentleman was moving, he could not take it with him. I saw that he listed it, that it was going to the trash, and I said, "I'll be right there to get it, if you can just hang tight." And I went and picked it up, and he helped me load it in my car, and she was mine. Unfortunately, he didn't know a lot. All he said was that his parents traveled a lot. I tried to do some personal research, um, as far as deciphering what that meant. I did get some opinions that it's alluding to some sort of emperor and a season, not necessarily a year. I also tried to figure out what this was that she was holding, because that's really what drew me to the piece. And I may not pronounce it right, but I found a ruyi, or ryu...
APPRAISER: Ruyi.
GUEST: Ruyi.
APPRAISER: That is a special scepter. It's called a ruyi scepter.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And it means, basically, "as you wish." "May your dreams come true." The painting is kind of a thick watercolor on silk.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And in the inscription there is a name, and that is Tang Yin. And he was one of the four great painters...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: ...of the Ming dynasty. Tang Yin lived between 1470 and 1524. He was a brilliant poet, and he pioneered the use of a special kind of script calligraphy that we would call cursive, which is called running script.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISERS: And he was number one in the civil service government examinations.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: In the entire country of China. So he was a brilliant, brilliant person. But he was kind of a bad boy. (chuckles) He liked to have fun. Within the inscription, you had noted something about a season.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: So it also talks about something in the summer season.
GUEST: Correct.
APPRAISER: That kind of time.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: It has a date.
GUEST: Oh, it has a date.
APPRAISER: Now, the dates in Chinese, in the Chinese calendar are organized in what are we call cyclical dates.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And it's a 60-year cycle. But the cyclical date comes to 1871. That would be from the Qing dynasty. Based on stylistic evidence, I'm having a hard time with the 1871 date.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: But it says that it was faithfully copied, essentially, from a Tang Yin. So it's not by Tang Yin.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: But it's a faithful copy. Stylistically, I would see this more from the 1920s, '30s.
GUEST: Okay. Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So someone looked at a painting...
GUEST: Ah!
APPRAISER: ...from 1871 that, in turn, was looking back to a painting by Tang Yin.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: We... don't have the repertoire of all the Tang Yin paintings here in front of us to go through and see,
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: is there a picture of a beautiful woman...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...seated at a table that was part of his work. If it no longer exists, then instead of having just a copy of a copy, you have a documentary work that could potentially have a fair amount of value.
GUEST: Nice, aw.
APPRAISER: An insurance value, a replacement value, for this would be, in a reasonably... in the $6,000 range.
GUEST: Really? (laughing): I don't even know what to say. Oh, my goodness. Wow. That's amazing. I'm very happy with that. I mean, I knew she was beautiful. Whether she has value or not, she has value to me.
