What's under your bed? $$$$$$

I bet most of you have seen the PBS show Antiques Road Show or the Blue Collar Cable version called Pawn Stars. Usually the dynamic happens when someone totally unawares brings in some object that they have had in their attic and hope that the "expert" will find value in that object and they in turn will land a financial windfall. Well....

.....just the other day this man walks into the Gallery. He loves art. Says it really calms him down after a hard day and that art and a good painting has a transformative power on his spirit. Okay. We talk for awhile and he asks me if I know anything about Western Art. He says someone owed him some money awhile back and he accepted a painting as trade for the debt. He tells me that Western Art is not exactly his style and that he really did not like the painting. He could not stand looking at it.

 

 So..... he put the painting under his bed. He in the meanwhile tells me that he lost his art collection , which was substantial , when one of his  houses was destroyed in New Orleans by Katrina. Those paintings, he recalls , were beautiful.

Well, back to the story. So, after 15 years he remembers that he has the painting under his bed and just wants to get rid of it.

 He asks me... Have you heard of an artist called Frank Tenney Johnson? I responded absolutely! He was Sam Hyde Harris' , my mentor's next door neighbor. He looks at me with astonishment. I then tell him how there was an artist's colony on Champion Place in Alhambra Ca. It was considered the place to be around the 20's to 40's if you were serious as an artist. Norman Rockwell in fact visited this group when he came visiting Southern California. In fact, I told him, one of my art buddys had been actually painting in Frank Tenney Johnson's Studio which has wonderful north light with a very high ceiling and a loft. It had a distinctive spanish california feel.

Sam Hyde Harris and Frank Tenney Johnson were neighbors.

 We are both amazed. He tells me that he had contacted Aldermanns Auction in Santa Fe and he was told that  his 16 x 20 panel painting could probably attract interest and fetch anywhere between 30 to $100,000 dollars! Wow he says out loud with a laugh. He then asks me if I could photograph the painting for him. Of course I agree .... mainly because I have been a fan of Johnson's Work for years. Any expert of Johnson will tell you that the artist is famous for his moonlight scenes where a cowboy is on a white horse and the caballero is smoking a cigarette. Unfortunetly, his painting is a daylight scene where he has featured a native american woman , which just might interest the Johnson collector for its novelty.

 He came back the next week with the painting which was unframed. It was wrapped in fisherman's paper. I was almost expecting him to produce a smelly trout. There it was ... a real Frank Tenney Johnson. Boy... would I like to have this painting in the Gallery! I tell him that if he wants top dollar he needs to get a nice frame to really show off the painting and its importance.Presentation is half the journey in Art unfortunetly.

 I call my buddy Tim who is equally amazed by the story. The world gets smaller by the minute... below is a pic of Tim Solliday inside Frank Tenney Johnson's Studio.

So ... What's under your bed.... okay .... don't answer that!