'Antiques Roadshow' guest says 'that's ridiculous' after expert revealed the value of her old painting
An elderly guest on "Antiques Roadshow" got a great surprise after she found out that a painting she had hung in her home for 45 years was worth about $30,000. Grace, the owner of Levi Wells Prentice Painting, who thought very little of the artwork, was enlightened by the show's expert, Alasdair Nichol. In the end, she was left in disbelief after Nichol told her how valuable the item was.
In the episode, Nichol got into a light-hearted banter with Grace over her treatment of the painting. After she told him that the painting had been hanging in her home for 45 years, the appraiser was astonished. "Well, I had it the other way, and then everybody said, 'Grace, you're wrong.' And friends came to the house and did it this way, wired it that way, and it's been hanging that way for over 40 years," she shared. "Well, we could argue that one, but I think the clue is actually the signature here," Nichol said, pointing to the artist's initials.
"That's Levi Wells Prentice, who was born in the Adirondacks back in around about 1850 or so," Nichol explained. He then asked Grace where she got the painting, and the owner told him that she bought it from an art shop on Third Avenue, New York, at a reasonable price, and then she put a "terrible" frame on it. "I wouldn't disagree with that. It is a terrible frame. It really doesn't help the painting," Nichol quipped.
"Prentice is a marvelous artist. He's one of these painters who, I feel, when you've seen one of his paintings, you'll always recognize other ones. He's got a very distinctive realist style," he went on to explain. He added that his still life paintings were highly sought after and most of them belonged to the coveted art collectors.
"He was well known for doing these still-life paintings. Often it was strawberries, sometimes raspberries, apples, quite often tumbling out of a basket, as is happening here. Hence the confusion about which way it should be hanging," Nichol added. The expert then asked Grace if she remembered how much she paid for the painting. "Oh, yeah, like, $50 or $60," she shared.
Hearing this, Nichol was already grinning as he knew that the market for the artist's paintings had moved on quite a lot. "There's a lot of demand for his work these days, and particularly for this kind of still life," he told the guest. He then went on to estimate that at auction, the painting could easily fetch a sum in the region of $20,000 to $30,000. Hearing this, Grace was thoroughly surprised as she said, "That's ridiculous. I loved it! I mean, it's such a wonderful, wonderful painting!"
In the end, Nichol brought the owner's attention back to the frame as he jokingly said, "It deserves a better frame."
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