Real-life Art Stories
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“A few years ago, I was on a cruise when the weather turned bad. I decided to check out indoor activities, including an art auction. I put in a bid on a one-of-a-kind Peter Max painting, but expected to be outbid. When I won it, I wasn’t too sure I wanted it! But I hung onto it.
“Two years later, I learned that the piece was part of Peter Max’s tribute to 9/11 – and it was worth $8,500!” – Janice
“My husband’s grandfather loved to sail. When he died, my husband requested one of the paintings from his collection of maritime art. And although he didn’t get the exact painting he wanted, my husband was happy to have something to remember his grandfather by.
“We were always curious if the painting had any value beyond sentiment, so when I learned that an art appraiser would be at a charity event I planned to attend, I decided to take it for an evaluation. It turned out to be an original James G. Tyler painting of the America’s Cup – appraised at $12,000!” – Amber
“We spend many a Saturday roaming around small towns near our home in Pennsylvania to attend garage sales. At one of the sales, we didn’t see anything we wanted, but decided to ask the seller if he had any paintings. He led us to the attic, where Ester found four paintings she liked – mainly for the frames. The pictures were so dirty that we couldn’t even tell what they were. The man sold three of the paintings for a total of $20, but he charged me $15 for the fourth.
“Several days later, we found someone to clean the frames. The cleaner called us at 10 p.m. that night to tell us that the painting we paid $15 for was an original work by French Impressionist Alfred Sisley, which would likely sell for more than $200,000 at an art sale. Needless to say, we’ve put the painting in the bank vault until we can decide what to do with the money!” – Bill and Ester
By John Austin Star-Telegram Staff Writer
ARLINGTON- Picture this: you buy an old frame at auction for two bucks; the next week that $2 investment nets you more than $500.
That’s what happened when Tal Finley discovered a painting beneath the backing of a frame he bought to mount his son’s band medals.
Finley, 53, did a little research and learned that the signed tempera-and-watercolor painting depicting a mounted hunter shooting at a running buffalo was by Doc Tate Nevaquaya, a Native American artist who died in 1996.
He put the painting on eBay; on Sunday, it went for $512.77. “This painting to me is like my 9-pound bass,” said Finley, an Arlington RV-parts salesman.
The buyer, Daniel Kasza of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, considered it a big catch too. “I’ve wanted a piece by doc Nevaquaya for years,” Kasza said. “I’ve never found the right piece at the right price.”
Steve Grafe, curator of Native American collections at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, said that Nevaquaya was an important 20th-century Oklahoma artist. “If I could invest my money like that, I’d be haunting garage sales every week,” Grafe said.
June 26, 2005
BY Michael Coronado
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. -- The Trevinos had minutes to grab keepsakes and valuables from their hand-built home.
Red-tagged and perched on a ledge, the home was a casualty of the Laguna Beach, Calif., landslide. Police told the Trevinos two weeks ago that they could grab a few items under escort from the house that city officials had deemed unsafe to live in because of the June 1 slide.
For about an hour, family and friends collected valuables, placing them in trash barrels on wheels. They also carried out a painting of Mission San Juan Capistrano, which Al Trevino bought at a garage or sidewalk sale for less than $100.
It turns out, the plein-air painting is worth about $500,000, said art expert Ray Redfern.
"I didn't believe it," said Al Trevino, the 74-year-old family patriarch. "This is a miracle."
The 1920s artwork, called "Evening Shadows," depicts the Mission and was painted by Joseph Kleitsch, a pioneer of the California plein-air movement.
Trevino bought the painting 20 years ago because he thought it would cover up a glaring, white wall in his Laguna Beach home. For years, it's hung in the living room of his five-bedroom home.
Though he considered the painting pretty and his wife liked the Mission, no one really took a second a glance at it during visits and parties.
Trevino's son, Laurence, snatched the painting from the home because it carried sentimental value, he said.
"The only reason I grabbed it was because my mom loved the Mission so much," Laurence said. "At least that way they'd always have something they love if they moved into a new house."
Family friend Pamela Hagen first alerted Al that he might have something special. The painting was gorgeous, she thought, and then she recognized the painter's signature.
Not wanting to disappoint his family, Trevino sat on the news for a day to get confirmation that the painting was an original.
"I felt it could have been an original, but I didn't know enough about plein-air art," he said.
The painting can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars because it is one of the rare, high-quality pieces from the plein-air movement depicting a specific California landmark, said Redfern, an expert on plein-air paintings.
Rarer still is that Kleitsch painted the Mission at that point in time, when few others were around to visually document the storied landmark in such quality.
"The historical significance will bring in five times more than others," Redfern said of the price. "There were only so many painters out there with great quality (during that time) and he was there."
Redfern said he is brokering the sale of the painting for free, saving the Trevinos thousands in commission costs an auction house would have charged. Instead, he'll publicize the Trevino's story to get the very best price for the displaced family. The painting is being stored at the Laguna Art Museum.
"The miracle is that we lost the house worth $1.8 million and this will help us with the rebuilding," Trevino said. "Isn't life just a series of twists and turns? You don't know what can happen."
* In Anaheim, nearly 2,000 meet appraisers to discover whether thepaintings they brought are worth big bucks. There were some finds.
By Jennifer Delson, Times Staff Writer
THE L.A. Times
Lugging framed portraits, landscapes and abstractions, nearly 2,000 people took time from their Labor Day weekend for free art appraisals at the Anaheim Convention Center on Saturday.
They waited in line for about an hour to see if their garage find or once-overlooked gift was actually worth anything.
"People love to know if they have something of value," said Gene Valaitis, executive vice president of International Galleries Inc., a Dallas-based company that sells reproductions of original art.
The company sponsored the Anaheim event to search for undiscovered
material it could reproduce and to gather video footage for a television show the company is producing, Valaitis said.
"This is a way to find gems and get them out there," he said. "It's not uncommon for us to unearth something of real value."
Among those hoping to unearth some value Saturday was Elaine Gonzales of Los Angeles.
Friends and family kid her about her treasure-hunting forays to garage sales, she said.
Gonzales brought a cityscape she had purchased for $2.50.
"I'm the queen of garage sales," said Gonzales, a business consultant. "I want to see if what I've been doing has any payoff."
It did, appraiser Andy Roughton told her. Roughton said the painting was an original by French artist Lucien Ducuing and was worth about $500.
The painting Nancy Cavanaugh brought, of a canal scene in Venice in an elaborate golden frame, was worth even more, according to Roughton.
Cavanaugh, of West Hills, said she inherited the painting from her mother-in-law.
The work by Giuseppe Vivian, circa 1950, was probably worth more than $5,000, Roughton said, and the frame more than $1,000.
Both Gonzales and Cavanaugh said they were not likely to sell their works, but would place them in more prominent spots in their homes.
"I guess I might take it out of the garage now," said Gonzales.
Michael Daskalakis, 43, an electrician from Monrovia, had poorer luck.
His painting of a cobblestone street, which had an inscription on the back that read "Anna B. Masters, Paris, France," was not worth anything, Roughton said.
Daskalakis said he had hoped it was worth at least more than the $9 he paid for parking at the convention center. None of the appraisals could be independently verified, including a couple of possible Michelangelo finds that Roughton said another appraiser discovered.
The owners of the pieces, a man, his wife and her mother, declined to identify themselves to a reporter.
They said they were told the two drawings were sketches by Michelangelo for his statue, "La Pieta."
The mother said her husband received the drawings as a Christmas gift from the late actress Greer Garson. He was Garson's podiatrist, she said.
"This is very exciting," said the mother, who was escorted to her car by security guards.
"It's great to finally know what they are after all these years."
Monday November 21, 2005
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) A painting that couldn't get 50 cents at a rummage sale sold for $19,000 at a Houston auction.
Proceeds from Sunday's auction will go to the Wenholz House in Corpus Christi, a former crack den that is now a self-supporting halfway house for 20 recovering alcoholics and drug abusers.
``It's awesome news,'' Wenholz House director Lou Cuneo said Monday. ``Now we've got closure, we're going to be able to get a check and buy something tangible with it.''
After the rummage sale, Cuneo on impulse looked up the signature on the aging, tobacco smoke-darkened oil painting and found out Alfred de Breanski was a 19th-century artist whose paintings sold for big money.
Simpson's Galleries in Houston cleaned up the painting and auctioned it for the house.
Bidding started at $10,000 for the 20 inches by 30 inches mountain landscape entitled ``The Pass of Leney,'' gallery art expert Ray Simpson Jr. said.
``Fifty cents to $19,000 that's a hell of a return,'' Simpson said.
Cuneo said the bulk of the money would go to outfit the kitchen, which among other things needs a $10,000 vent hood.
Cuneo told the person who donated the painting about it's estimated value before the auction, but the person wanted to keep it an anonymous donation to the house, Cuneo said.
De Breanski (1852-1928) often painted scenes of rural Scotland.
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