Appraisal: Edward Potthast Oil Portrait, ca. 1915
we found this at a thrift store near minneapolis minnesota i stopped at the hardware store my wife didn't want to go to the hardware store so i dropped her off at the thrift store to kill some time when i went back in to pick her up i found this painting there how much did it cost in the thrift store 6.99 plus tax it was in very poor condition it was torn it was dirty had a hole in it it was halloween weekend and it appeared to me it had been decorated uh for halloween because there were some pumpkins there around it and the figure's eyes were blackened in with a permanent marker like a jack-o-lantern eye and her fingernails were blackened everything about it looked old and original and i just thought it deserved a little more research we actually researched it while we were still in the store and lo and behold it pops up and i couldn't believe it well what you've brought is an oil on canvas painting and it is signed in the lower right e podcast and edward henry pottast was a cincinnati born artist got his basic training but he really ended up in new york and he carved out his reputation for painting in new york city and he was best known for painting scenes of coney island when potas was in new york he would have very likely painted commissioned portraits it was a means to make a living potass really reached his maturity when he was in new york the neat thing about this particular portrait is that it is from his mature period the landscape work in the background is much more advanced than the kind of work he was doing in cincinnati edward pottas moved permanently to new york city in 1895 and i would place this probably 19 teens or 1920s you had it restored probably a significant amount of restoration right 1400 what about the frame and that was 300 extra an example like this in a nice restored condition at auction would be expected to fetch around eight thousand to twelve thousand dollars oh very good very good that's proof that it can still happen that people can still find great things in thrift stores yeah can be done
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