Antiques Roadshow

GUEST: I was at a estate sale in Washington last November, and I just thought they were really beautiful.

APPRAISER: And what did you pay for them?

GUEST: Five bucks apiece.

APPRAISER: And do you know who they're by?

GUEST: Dale Nichols" is what it says in the front corner.

APPRAISER: Its always hard when they're under glass to determine exactly what the medium is.

But this looks very much as though it's chalk.

These are drawings on black paper.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: He was born in 1904 in Nebraska.

He lived on a farm, and he was used to farm life, and that followed him all his life.

He was always interested in the Midwest.

He was interested in doing paintings of farms.

Probably the best description of him would be a, a rural regionalist.

But he traveled as well-- in Alaska, Louisiana, and he passed away in 1995 in Arizona.

They're both signed and both dated 1985, so that tells us these are later works.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: These are two landscapes, both with a solitary figure, very much "man in nature."

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: We know that his last years were in Arizona; these don't look like Arizona to me.

GUEST: (chuckling): Right.

APPRAISER: Its possible it's Alaska, it's possible this is a glacier.

We don't know-- he may have used his own artistic eye and recreated something from his past travels.

He was not a fan of modernism.

GUEST: (chuckling): Okay.

APPRAISER: So, he-he came from that sort of brand of regionalism.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: And, to an extent, he didn't have a problem with being a commercial artist.

Some of his works are quite illustrative, and it's no wonder that they were used occasionally... GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: in magazines like Time or Life magazine.

He also did illustrations for Saturday Evening Post as well as Liberty magazine.

This one, at auction, I think would be $800 to $1,200.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And this one here, $3,000 to $5,000.

GUEST: Whoa-ho.

That's a good find.

(laughing): Yeah.

Okay.

I'm okay with that.