Desert Finds: Palm Desert Art Appraisal Day

This weekend I was lucky enough to be part of the Palm Desert Historical Society's Art Appraisal Day. I was asked to be the appraiser for an Antiques Roadshow-style event which was part of the month long Desertscapes.

The annual event takes place every April focused on celebrating the art of the desert. The Palm Desert Historical Society did a great job finding desert locals to bring their Southwestern and California paintings, drawings, prints, and photos for an informal evaluation.

I saw mixture of great southwestern art, including artworks by Conrad Buff, Edgar Payne, James Swinnterton, among lesser known Palm Springs artists.

The best part was meeting the interesting people who found these treasures at flea markets, auctions, or inherited them from family members. While many of the artworks were of a modest value, some of them were Western artists considered among the best in California and the Southwest.

The desert art historian, blogger, and writer Ann Japenga, who helped organize the Desert Appraisal Day,  recently sent me a great article on an art discovery.

A Connecticut man recently decided to sell two oil paintings that hung in his basement. After an estate removal company offered the man a measley $125 a piece,the decided to get a proper appraisal done by a certified appraiser. As it turns out, he had two paintings by one of the most important American artists of the 19th century (with auction records of up to $2.5 million!)

You can read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/arts/design/jasper-f-cropsey-paintings-of-the-hudson-river-school-turn-up.html?_r=1

 Jasper Francis Cropsey "Autumn Landscape, Sugar Loaf, Orange County, New York" Jasper Francis Cropsey, ca.1870-75/Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Art Find of the Month - William Stubbs

This month's ART FIND submission is an interesting work by the East Coast painter William Stubbs. As an art appraiser in California I often deal with Western art, but I have a keen interest in American art done on the other side of the country.

After watching too many episodes of Antiques Roadshow, all of us hopes to find a treasure at a weekend estate sale. This time, our reader seems to have done so! Back in 2008 our reader and avid treasure-hunter headed out to an estate sale on the north shore of Long Island.  Here, he found this painting by the famous marine painter William Stubbs. 

Painted in 1880 this painting, "Three Masted Ship in Storm" appears to be a quintessential ship portrait done by Stubbs.  William Pierce Stubbs (1842–1909) was born in Orrington, Maine. As the son of a shipmaster, Stubbs learned the architecture of a ship by working on it. It is thought that he became the master of his father's ship between 1863-73. In 1871 he painted  his first ship portrait and by 1876 he was known as a Boston area marine painter. Stubbs shared a studio with the artist Wesley Webber and continued painting well-known ships in the area.

William Pierce Stubbs exhibited on of his early paintings in Boston's International Marine Exhibition of 1889, where he gained acclaim as a young American artist. Stubbs produced a small body of work and is acknowledged by the American art market as a professional and listed artist. Stubbs worked throughout the Eastern seaboard, creating a number of ship paintings. His paintings are held in the collections at the Mariner's Museum, the Mystic Seaport Museum, the Beverly Historical Society, the Philadelphia Marine Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.

William Pierce Stubbs has a highly recognizable style. Most of his works depict the profile of a ship with a focus on detail. He often includes the name of this ship within the painting. Known for his dramatic depictions of ominous weather and rough waves encompassing the ship, Stubbs almost always signed his paintings in red. Many of his paintings document important historical ships of the period.

William Pierce Stubbs current values are based on auction records and gallery pricing. Estimating an artwork's value takes into account the condition, size, authenticity, provenance, and the current economy. When estimating a value, an appraiser also has to consider the popularity of an artist’s style -- and whether the artwork is being sold at a gallery or auction.

Many galleries and auction houses on the East coast sell William Pierce Stubb's work. "Three Masted Ship in Storm" is a large painting and if it is in good condition, an early work of this quality could be highly sought after by collectors. Values for Stubbs work have a wide range of pricing which, like every art appraisal, are based on age, condition, rarity, artistic merit, technical workmanship, current trends and availability of an article.  The highest values are paid for famous, named ships. In an auction, this painting would likely be estimated between $5,000-$7,000, and perhaps more if the ship's name could be identified. A treasure indeed!

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Alissa J. Anderson is an art appraiser for Anderson Shea Art Appraisals in Santa Barbara, California. She specializes in appraisals for insurance purposes, resale value, estate tax, and charitable donation. She is a member of the Appraisers Association of America (USPAP-compliant), qualified to appraise American paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Anderson also works as an art writer and curator. (www.andersonshea-artappraisals.com)


©2011 Alissa Anderson, Santa Barbara, California. All Rights Reserved. This is not an appraisal. Authenticity is not guaranteed. This article is for educational purposes only. None of the contents of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Anderson Shea Art Appraisals, and the appraiser’s signature. )

The Need for Insurance Art Appraisals

One of the most common questions I get from art appraisal clients is whether they need to spare the expense of an Insurance Art Appraisal Report, and if so, how often Insurance Appraisals need to be reevaluated. There is a great article on the topic just published on the Appraisers Association of America's website by Edward Yee. Click to see the Full Article.

To answer my first question: Yes, most insurance companies require appraisals on artworks valued at over $5,000. This means any artwork (i.e. California paintings, mid-century sculptures, figure drawings, impressionist watercolors) worth $5,000 or more -- need  Insurance appraisal report. This will enable you to protect your artwork in the case of damage, theft, fire, loss, etc.

In terms of art appraisal reevaluation, it is essential that insurance values be diligently updated every 2 years, even during stable markets. In Yee's article he says it is particularly important to evaluate works when there are either rapid increases or decreases in values. As an insurance client, is important to know the current value of your artworks so as to properly protect them. For clients who have artworks that have risen in value, but have not been reappraised at a higher price, will only be compensated for the old appraisal price in the case of loss, damage, or theft.

For artworks that have decreased in value, paying for a updated art appraisal can save clients money on their premiums. For instance, in the case of damage to an artwork, insurance carriers may question and ultimately refuse to reimburse a client for an artwork that is overvalued in an old appraisal (even if the client has been paying a high premium based on the overvalued artwork).

Another benefit to having consistent updated appraisal done is for future donations to museums. "Insurance appraisals can also, in some instances, serve as a strong basis for future donation appraisals, particularly if retail sales records have been maintained over a period of time and values have been updated every few years," says Yee. Since Charitable Donation Appraisals are often contested by the IRS, collectors want to make sure to have a reliable basis for establishing an artwork's market value.

All in all, while an Insurance Art Appraisal may seems like an extra expense, you are protecting yourself and your financial future if you have art in your home.

(Alissa J. Anderson does Insurance Appraisals, Fair Market Value Appraisals, Charitable Donation Appraisals throughout Southern California including Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, Ventura, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, Ojai, Moorpark, San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach, and the Tri-Counties.)

Early Painters of the Borrego Desert

This week, I've decide to highlight an article by Ann Japenga, who discovered a painting for $99 by desert artist Edith Purer. Our contributing writer and desert art expert is a former Los Angeles Times reporter whose work has appeared in many publications including Sierra, Utne, The New York Times.

Japenga says her introduction to desert art came when she bought her first smoketree painting at Carl Bray’s roadside gallery in Indian Wells some 15 years ago. Though she fretted over whether to drop $100 on the painting, she wound up with a far better deal than she could have guessed. The canvas was her doorway into the rich, bohemian world of the early desert artists.
She now writes the go-to online magazine on Desert Art: http://www.californiadesertart.com/

"Early Painters of the Borrego Desert" by Ann Japenga
(This article first appeared in The Sand Paper, the newsletter of the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association.)

Around 1930 a young botanist from Chicago came to the Borrego desert to dig in the sand and collect native plants. At some point hunting for tansy-mustard and tidy-tips wasn’t enough for her, so she took out her easel and began painting the dunes and smoke trees.

Last month I picked up one of her 1930s Borrego paintings on eBay for $99. When I hung the painting on my bedroom wall, it immediately connected me to Edith Purer herself (she became California’s first woman ecologist), as well as to the plants, topography and mood of Anza-Borrego. I live in Palm Springs, but the last thing I see at night is the Borrego desert.

(Painting of the Borrego desert, circa 1930s, by botanist and ecologist Edith Purer)

That’s the beauty of the early desert paintings: Their ability to connect you to landscape and history. Though desert paintings are soaring in popularity with collectors, you can still scour thrift shops and online sales and pick up lesser-known artists for less than $100.

The early California artists, also known as plein-air painters (plein air means “in the open”), are the original conservationists. The paintings of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, for instance, showed the world what was worth saving in Yosemite. In the Coachella Valley where I live, the early artists preserved in paint fields of verbena and cholla that are gone forever due to development.

In Borrego, you are lucky to have many of the original landscapes intact. In many cases, you can still locate the precise arroyo a painter captured, or stand in the exact spot the artist stood.

After landing an original Edith Purer, I started to wonder what other painters may have worked in Borrego. The only name I knew of was the irrepressible stagecoach painter Marjorie Reed, but there had to be more. After all, many now-famous painters captured the deserts just over the hill in the Coachella Valley—Jimmy Swinnerton, Paul Grimm, John Hilton.

North Shore art collector Allan Seymour told me the Palm Springs artists for the most part did not travel to Borrego. “The toe of the Santa Rosas made it a much longer journey for Palm Springs, LA or Laguna painters to journey all the way to Anza-Borrego,” he said. “This made the area a San Diego painters’ Mecca.”

Fortunately for Borrego history, San Diego was a hotbed of landscape painting in the early decades of the 20th century; and the most famous artists—Alfred Mitchell, Maurice Braun and Charles Fries—fell in love with the Borrego desert. At the time Edith Purer was scouting the dunes, Charles Fries was sketching at Coyote Wells while dodging falling boulders, coiled rattlesnakes and gem smugglers.

Alfred Mitchell brought carloads of his lady art students over from San Diego; some became avid Borrego painters themselves. William Bartko, who died in Borrego Springs, was out painting the favorite plant of the painters—smoketrees. While the coastal painters worshipped the eucalyptus, the desert painters could not get enough of the scrubby, shape-shifting smoketree.

Another San Diego painter who frequented Borrego, Charles Reiffel was compared to Cezanne and Van Gogh for the boldness of his imagination.

Maurice Braun, most revered of the San Diego artists, was heavily influenced by the School of Theosophy at Point Loma (known as Lomaland). With the mystical tenets of Theosophy guiding them, Braun, Alfred Mitchell and other Theosophists ventured over the hill to the desert. Amy Difley Brown, one of those who attended the Theosophy school, often camped in the desert with her granddaughter, Lynne Salmon, in a little teardrop trailer. Salmon, who lives in La Mesa, told me one of their most memorable campouts was going to visit Brown’s friend, Marjorie Reed, at Campbell Ranch.

What I’ve told you here is just an overview—and hopefully a temptation. There is plenty more to be discovered about the Borrego painters. A good place to start is The Journal of San Diego History (many editions are available online) and the website www.AskArt.com that compiles information about thousands of famous and obscure artists.

For more articles by Ann Japenga: see: http://www.californiadesertart.com/?page_id=7

California Modernist - Channing Peake

Many of California's great artists came through Santa Barbara at one point or another. As an art appraiser, I get to see many of theses paintings in local collections. Santa Barbara served as an artist colony of the Eucalyptus School and later appealed to many California modernists. Inspired by Santa Barbara's landscape, architecture, and history -- artists flocked to the small Central Coast community. One of the town's important artists, albeit lesser known, was Channing Peake who was a muralist, painter, and draftsman.

Channing Peake "Man on a Horse" (Askart.com)

Channing Peake (1910 – 1989) was born in Marshall, Colorado but as a young boy he and his family moved to northern California. After completing high school, Peake began attending art school at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. For two years he studied at the Santa Barbara School of Art and then traveled to New York at the Art Students League under Rico Lebrun, a colleague he would come to work with for many years. He also befriended the great Diego Rivera and traveled to Mexico, Guatemala, and Europe with the famous muralist. Under the WPA Federal Art Project, he became a muralist and in 1928 helped paint murals in Santa Barbara's El Paseo Restaurant, along with fellow artists Edward Borein, Joe DeYoung, and Will James.

Peake ultimately settled in Santa Barbara where he became a founding member of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He collaborated with artist, Howard Warshaw on the Don Quixote mural at Santa Barbara City Library. In 1984 Peake completed a mural which is planned to be on display in 2011 at the Santa Barbara Airport's new terminal.

His work has been exhibited at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Carnegie Institute, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the M. De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Pasadena Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon, the San Diego Museum of Art, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Seattle Museum of Art.

For further reading, check out a recent article in Santa Barbara Magazine.

ART FIND - Rembrandt or Wullbrandt?

(Published in Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine/ Fall 2010)

Doing art appraisals in California, I have a particular interest in local artists and how their art markets.  So when Carpinteria locals, Debra and Paul Aresco, submitted this painting by California landscape painter John Wullbrandt, I was eager to discover its worth.

The question is: Does this painting have any value in today's art market? I always tell my appraisal clients to remember that value is based on many factors. While family history or nostalgia seems to count for a lot, it’s not what substantiates value. An official art appraisal is based on market comparables and takes into account the artist, as well as condition, size, authenticity, provenance, and the current economy. An appraiser also has to consider the popularity of an artist’s style -- and whether the artwork is being sold at a gallery or auction.

All of us hope to stumble upon a masterpiece in our local thrift store. When our collector walked into the Catholic Thrift Store a few years ago she immediately recognized this painting by John Wullbrandt. She didn’t know if it was valuable, but remembered him painting it while they were in school together at Carpinteria High School in the 1970s. So she decided to buy it -- for $3!

What I discovered is that John Wullbrandt is a contemporary artist born in Santa Barbara, California. He is a self-taught painter known for his realistic landscapes and trompe l’oeil paintings. Wullbrandt spent many years establishing a career in Hawaii and returned to Santa Barbara to paint from his art studio on a local ranch. This painting, “Still Life with Pears” is an early work by Wullbrandt and has a likeness to Cezanne’s work. Utilizing cubist forms, muted colors, and flattened perspective -- Wullbrandt was experimenting with modernist techniques.

While Wullbrandt has no auction records, a number of galleries in California and Hawaii sell his work. “Still Life with Pears” is a large painting, which is in good condition. An early work of this quality would be highly sought after by collectors. While this $3 thrift store find may be a Wullbrandt rather than a Rembrandt, it’s a treasure indeed! In a gallery, this painting would be estimated to sell between $10,000-$12,000.
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Alissa J. Anderson is an art appraiser for Anderson Shea Art Appraisals in Santa Barbara, CA. She specializes in appraisals for insurance purposes, resale value, estate tax, and charitable donation. She is a member of the Appraisers Association of America (USPAP-compliant), qualified to appraise American and European paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Anderson also works as an art writer and independent curator. (www.andersonshea-artappraisals.com)

©2010 Alissa J. Anderson, Santa Barbara, California. All Rights Reserved. None of the contents of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Anderson Shea Art Appraisals, and the appraiser’s signature.)

Art Find of the Month - Francis De Erdely

When I asked readers to submit artworks for this month’s ART FIND Art Appraisal of the Month, I got a piece by one of my favorites. As a American art appraiser, people often ask me who my favorite artist is. . . and this month’s entry happens to be my California artist of choice.

I have a long list of favorites, but Los Angeles mid-century artist Francis De Erdely is always at the my top of my list. In fact, I wrote my M.A. thesis on his social realist figurative work done in Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s.

Our Utah reader inherited this De Erdely painting entitled, “Lavandera” from her grandmother. She also discovered a Christmas card from the artist himself, indicating her grandmother bought the painting directly from Francis De Erdely in 1957. What this means, is that aside from her family, the public has ever seen this remarkable example of De Erdely’s work!

Francis De Erdely (1904 - 1959) was born in Hungary as Ferenc Erdelyi. De The artist fled Europe during the 1930s, as Fascism was gaining power. After a brief stint in New York City and Chicago, De Erdely finally made his way to Southern California. Here, he became one of mid-century California’s most influential modern painters and teachers.

De Erdely was a classically trained artist committed to painting the figure. Having traveled throughout Spain, De Erdely became influenced by the sinuous, elongated bodies of El Greco. De Erdely almost always painted the figure, a genre not often associated with modernism. Interestingly, his portraits were painted not out of nostalgia for the past, but as a reflection of the human condition on the West Coast.

With a likeness to Thomas Hart Benton’s powerful everyday Americans, De Erdely created some of the most striking figurative paintings in American art -- and his work remains poignant today. De Erdely has been included in more than twenty books about Los Angeles painters of the mid-century but there is no major monograph of his work.

De Erdely was known for his paintings of the modern figure as a way of addressing issues of race, immigration, labor, and social inequality in Los Angeles. The painting “Lavandera” demonstrates De Erdely’s ability to depict the simple yet graceful power of an everyday laundry lady. The cubist qualities represent De Erdely’s interest in a modernist aesthetic. The artist paints the woman’s face with severe angles that seem to mirror that of her laundry bucket. With a quiet power, the painting represents the complexity of one woman’s struggles and positions her as symbol as every woman.

From the photograph provided, the painting appears to be in good condition. A growing demand exists for Francis De Erdely’s work. The painting's style, technique, and brushwork are representative of his Los Angeles period, making it desirable to California modernist art collectors. The painting is well-executed and has a strong subject and composition, placing my art appraisal in the middle of the art market for De Erdely.

In the current art market, at auction this painting would be estimated to sell between $2,500-$3,500. A treasure indeed. . .

©2010 Alissa J. Anderson, Santa Barbara, California. All Rights Reserved. None of the contents of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Anderson Shea Art Appraisals, and the appraiser’s signature.)