'Antiques Roadshow' guest's sculpture is a 'headache' for expert who says it may be worth $4 million
"Antiques Roadshow" experts are usually known to deliver appraisals, which are surprising but also pleasant for the guests. But things don't go so well when they reveal that an item is fake or when they refuse to appraise artifacts. On one not-so-pleasant occasion, expert Hugh Scully told a guest, “I think you have given me my biggest headache." The guest had brought a bronze sculpture of the four horsemen of the Wild West. The artwork was made by the late great Frederic Remington. The reason this piece was a headache for the expert was the fact that he simply did not know if it was real.
If it were an authentic piece, it could be worth millions of dollars. The expert first asked if the guest knew much about the background of the artist, to which the guest admitted that he did not know much. Scully revealed that Remington was born and raised in a “comfortable” New York family and even attended Yale to study art. However, he left all of his comforts behind to spend time in the Wild West, which he marveled at.
Remington had invested in a saloon at the time and was cheated out of all his money. He came back to New York with only $3 in his pocket. However, that wasn’t all he had. The artist had made sketches of the Wild West, and when he came back home, he realized that he had a talent for modeling clay as well.
So that’s what he set his mind to and became one of the greatest at his job at the time. A lot of the models that he created depicted the sketches that he drew during his time in the Wild West. The piece that the guest had brought to the show seemed to be the same thing. The only problem with it was that there was no way of knowing if it was authentic.
“What I don’t like is the fact that it doesn’t say copyright. Nor anywhere, unless I’ve missed it, can I see the Foundry stamp,” the expert said. “However, having said that, The Foundry itself was allowed to make a few models after originals were destroyed…his widow ordered it all to be destroyed. But they made some, what the Americans call, midnight copies.”
These midnight copies were basically illegal replicas of Remington’s original work. Scully then revealed that most of the replicas were made within the 20 to 30 years at the time of taping. If this were one of those items, it would be worth $3,000 to $4,000. There were certain aspects of the sculpture that the guest pointed out that were not neat and clean, like a drip of wax or a bent pistol barrel. An artist like Remington would have surely had them straightened out.
However, he left the guest with a “sobering” thought. “I’m not trying to overvalue this or give you an impression of what this is worth at all. The first one of these, number one, made…$4 million,” he said, much to the surprise and amusement of the guest.
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