Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

So this picture is my great-grandfather, who was a Naval surgeon. He went to City College of New York, and then enlisted in the Navy, and served in World War II. After he got back, he started doing surgeries in Harlem. And in the time around the 1940s, he was trading surgeries and medical practices for art and art pieces. There's a little inscription on the painting that says "To Skip and Florence, with love from Spinky." It's also written "Charles H. Alston."

APPRAISER

How did your great-grandfather wind up practicing in Harlem?

GUEST

I think they moved there before or after the war, or some, sometime around then. We don't know that much about what they were doing day to day, but just that Florence was an art collector, and, uh, had a huge appreciation for art, and that Skip was a general surgeon. My family received it probably less than ten years ago. We put it in our guest room in the back of the house because we didn't know anything about it.

APPRAISER

I'd love to know what the money exchange was there at that time, back in the '40s or '50s, but I guess we won't know that. Charles Henry Alston was an African American artist. He was born in 1907 and he died in 1977. He was born in Charlotte, and he wound up getting his undergraduate and his graduate degree at Columbia University. His whole life, he was an artist. He participated in the Harlem Renaissance movement. He was very experimental. This particular scene here is a landscape, and the medium is gouache and watercolor. Gouache is, like, just a thick version of the watercolor.

GUEST

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER

And that would have been something that he probably would have done earlier in his life. As he went along, he became more experimental and he started doing Abstract Modernism. He was the first African American teacher at the Museum of Modern Art.

GUEST

Wow.

APPRAISER

In the 1950s. He designed an album cover for Duke Ellington.

GUEST

(chuckles)

APPRAISER

So we're talking about a pretty famous guy.

GUEST

Yeah.

APPRAISER

He was a huge proponent for equality, for equal rights and civil rights. In 1971, the Whitney did a, an exhibition of Black artist, and he refused to participate in it because he said he would never participate in an exhibit just because he was a Black artist.

GUEST

Wow.

APPRAISER

He would only do it because people loved his art and it was great.

GUEST

Wow.

APPRAISER

The market to date has probably gone with more interest in the Abstract Modernism than in the Realism.

Mm-hmm. APPRAISER

This piece of sculpture is a motif, the mother and child. I think it's made out of mahogany. It's not signed. I couldn't find any of his sculptures that were signed. As these things have come down through the family, was the knowledge out there that this particular sculpture was by this artist?

GUEST

Yes, they were always well-known throughout the family as a pair from Charles Alston.

APPRAISER

I have no trouble believing that this is by him. And I think the fact that it's been descended in your family helps with that, also.

Mm-hmm. APPRAISER

I would say they're post-World War II, probably in the '50s or the early '60s. When I started doing research, I found examples similar to this watercolor and gouache. A retail price on this would be around $3,000 to $5,000.

GUEST

Wow. (breathes deeply, chuckles)

APPRAISER

And I talked to a modern specialist, and he thinks this sculpture would be worth $15,000 to $20,000.

GUEST

(laughing) Oh, my gosh, wow! It's just been hanging around our house. (laughs) That's amazing, wow.