'Antiques Roadshow' guest says 'you're kidding' after hearing the real value of her $125 painting
“Antiques Roadshow” isn't simply about finding massive valuations for works by well known artists, but it's also a show where lesser known painters and sculptors get due recognition. Francois Gilot was relatively less known than her partner Pablo Picasso, but she was also a painter, and the two had a daughter together named Paloma. While Gilot was not as famous as Picasso, her works of art have still brought in a lot of money, and one of those turned up on "Antiques Roadshow."
Francois Gilot was 101 when she died on June 6 at a hospital in Manhattan. One of the main “muses” of Picasso, with whom she spent ten years and had two kids, Gilot was a talented painter and writer. After leaving Picasso she achieved a distinguished career as a painter, with her… pic.twitter.com/Ig0T2iVSfz
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The guest had brought in a Gilot painting, which was titled ‘Yellow Flower.’ She said that she had purchased it for $125 at an auction. When she heard its value after being appraised, she could hardly believe it. The expert, Nan Chisholm, revealed that Gilot and Picasso had been lovers for almost a decade, from 1944 to 1953.
Gilot had learned how to paint in quite a unique way. Her mother was also an artist, but she never taught her daughter how to draw. This was because she felt that artists at the time were getting over-reliant on the eraser. What she wanted her daughter to do was to make any mistakes made during painting a part of her art. Picasso had also been a massive influence on her life, but her painting style wasn’t as angular as his, as per Chrisholm.
The expert first noted that there had been a lot of interest in Gilot’s work at the time of taping. Some of her art had even sold for half a million dollars. For the ‘Yellow Flower’ painting, Chisholm said that in a retail setting, it could bring in as much as $20,000. The guest wasn’t expecting this at all. “Oh, you’re kidding,” she said.
Gilot’s ex-lover, Picasso, has also had his work featured on “Antiques Roadshow” on a number of occasions in the past. In one such case, an elderly guest had brought a plate with a face drawn on it, which was painted by the late great artist. The guest said that she had acquired it late in 1970 but did not realise that it was a Picasso until five years before the episode was shot.
She had gone to an art gallery, and that’s where she realized that the plate hanging over her stove was actually worth thousands of dollars. "I said oh, we have a plate pretty similar to that," the guest reminisced. "I said it's over the stove, and the guy sort of gasped.” The expert revealed that the name for that particular piece of art was 'Face in the Noble.'
The guest might have left an official in the art gallery gasping, but she was left speechless when she heard the value of what she owned. "Would you be surprised that an auction value in today's market, probably on the conservative side, would be in the range of $10,000 to $15,000?" the expert asked. The guest, lost for words, couldn’t do anything but grab his hand.
