Antiques Roadshow

HOST

From sand art to bird art, paintings expert and self-described nerd Colleene Fesco couldn't believe it when she was contacted by a prestigious museum about a parrot painting and other items she'd appraised in El Paso in 2011. She was even more surprised when she realized which part of the varied collection they were really after.

APPRAISER

This gentleman, Brian, came up to the painting desk. And when I first noticed was the beautiful watercolor of a parrot. And then he showed a wonderful drawing, very detailed drawing of a big cat. And then three journals written by the guests, grandfather.

GUEST

His name was Tom Ring. My grandfather went on an expedition for the American Museum of Natural History in 1913, and Fuertes was the artist on that expedition. My grandfather wrote journals and Fuertes, put drawings in the journals and gave my grandfather these paintings.

APPRAISER

Let me tell you a little bit about Fuertes. He was always interested in nature and birds and animals. He ended up illustrating many, many books. One of the things that he also did a lot of was to hire himself out as the artist for these expeditions. I was excited because Fuertes has always been a favorite of mine. I love ornithological imagery, and Fuertes is one of the most important ornithological artists of his time. We are experts on the Roadshow have in some ways a very narrow vision. We see something and we know why it's important and don't think of the myriad of other reasons that it might be important as well. I was focusing on the Fuertes watercolors and the drawings, thinking that was really interesting. But what I was first fascinated about was really three steps away from the whole story. The story just gets more interesting as we go on. Sketchbooks are very funny because there's no great way to present them or to discuss them because they're so intimate. But between your grandfather and Fuertes, they really captured the very, very best of expedition style sketch bookkeeping. Tom was quite a guy. I mean, he was a real outdoorsman, hunter. And when he was in Columbia, he was probably 24 or 25. So a young guy from Michigan going out there. And Fuertes wasn't much older. It was hard, hard, hard work. They were on mules. They were on boats. They were on steamers. They mentioned one time in the in the diaries that it was supposed to be the dry season, but it rained twice a day. The bugs, the mosquitoes, the animals. That was real jungle. This is a wonderful example of a

study of a group of birds. This is my favorite. GUEST

That's actually that's my favorite,

too. APPRAISER

Well, and this is something that you don't really see with Fuertes very much, which is the human figure. He was much happier with animals in terms of the value of the pieces for two. Is a highly, highly collected or really naturalist artist. I would estimate the parrot ate between five thousand and seven thousand dollars. Wow. The hunt scene at three to five thousand dollars and the three sketchbooks, which also include other drawings at $3000 -to $5000.

GUEST

Well, great. Shortly after the appraisal was on television, I was contacted by Paul Sweet from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And you all know what, what nerds your appraisers are. So we're getting a call from the museum. It was like getting a call from Mick Jagger to me. I mean, it was, I was so excited that they were calling and so excited that they were calling about something that I had appraised. And of course, I thought because my appraisal was so based on it, that it was about the Fuertes watercolors and drawings and the pieces that were in the journals. But in fact, he was most interested in was the journals of the museum has academic journals. They're very, very, very scientific. Tom Ring was just talking about the day to day of that expedition that gave them a boots on the ground view that they didn't have before when Brian heard about the museum's interest in them. He was very happy with the idea of donating them to the museum. The museum has many for where it is. So Brian kept the two works on paper. The journals are now kept in the archives of the Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History, and they're available to scholars or people doing research on that expedition. If I did the same appraisal for Brian today as I did in 2011, the values would be very similar. The monetary value of the journals hasn't changed. But the intellectual property of them has gone up a great deal, because that just adds a flavor to the expedition notes that didn't exist before.