Antiques Roadshow

GUEST: Well, as far as I know, it's, uh... Bartow Matteson is the name of the painter.

Uh, it was done in the early 1900s.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: And I believe that he's an illustrator for "The Saturday Evening Post."

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: And I bought it at an auction.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm-- good.

Well, it is an interesting piece, and it's definitely an illustration, an American illustration, from the early, uh, first part of the century.

Actually, it's easy to say.

It's dated '27, so it was painted in 1927.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: The artist was born in 1894, and he lived and painted in New York.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And he was an illustrator for Scribner's, um, who published "Saturday Evening Post," along with a lot, lot of other, uh, periodicals.

These illustrations were created to go with stories that were, of course, published in "The Saturday Evening Post."

And what it looks like is, we have a gentleman here who's very pensive, and he's thinking.

He could be a writer, because there's a desk here.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: There's an overflow of paperwork here.

And then there's a woman here, and she has a very loving, gentle look, like she's trying to encourage him to get through maybe a, a writer's block, is what I think.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: But it's, it's, it's hard to say without actually knowing the story.

Um, the artist's works don't come up for sale at auction terribly often.

So you were fairly lucky to find this work.

I would say that it would probably bring somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000, maybe around $4,000, to be more precise.

It is a, it is a good piece.

It doesn't appear to have ever been cleaned.

You can see, if you go very close into the brushwork, you can see a buildup of varnish that has, that has turned, which is good.

You want things in original condition, as long as the paint's stable and it's still... GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...easy to see.

Okay?

GUEST: Thank you very much.

APPRAISER: Well, thank you for coming.