I recently helped my granma move house, and she has loads of oil paintings - some of which I'm sure must be pretty valuable.
There's one in particular, that I think might be pretty valuable - and really want to make sure that she has appropriate insurance for these pictures. In fact, while she was moving she was visited by a very slick trickster, who was offering to dispose of trash. He pointed at this one painting and said, 'I need to get rid of this one immediately. It's full of woodworm and needs to be burned before it damages your other paintings'.
This one painting was oriignally bought by my grandpa about 60 years ago, from an antique shop - but looking at the framing and construction of the canvas it's almost certainly mid 18th century. It's a picture of baby Hercules, strangling the snakes sent to kill him. The painting is unsigned, but the baby and style of the picture are amazingly similar to this one.
I suppose the only way to be sure is to take them all to a auction house and have them valued, but is there a way to identify the good ones? Not all of the signatures are legible - and none are big grand masters who find billions of hits on google. But what of the unsigned ones?
Cliffs:
1. Nan has some paintings
2. One is def. from 1750 odd. Unsigned and slightly damaged, but extremely similar to the work of a major artist of that time.
3. Rest I can't easily identify - some are very old, some aren't.
4. Which ones are good, which one's aren't?
There's one in particular, that I think might be pretty valuable - and really want to make sure that she has appropriate insurance for these pictures. In fact, while she was moving she was visited by a very slick trickster, who was offering to dispose of trash. He pointed at this one painting and said, 'I need to get rid of this one immediately. It's full of woodworm and needs to be burned before it damages your other paintings'.
This one painting was oriignally bought by my grandpa about 60 years ago, from an antique shop - but looking at the framing and construction of the canvas it's almost certainly mid 18th century. It's a picture of baby Hercules, strangling the snakes sent to kill him. The painting is unsigned, but the baby and style of the picture are amazingly similar to this one.
I suppose the only way to be sure is to take them all to a auction house and have them valued, but is there a way to identify the good ones? Not all of the signatures are legible - and none are big grand masters who find billions of hits on google. But what of the unsigned ones?
Cliffs:
1. Nan has some paintings
2. One is def. from 1750 odd. Unsigned and slightly damaged, but extremely similar to the work of a major artist of that time.
3. Rest I can't easily identify - some are very old, some aren't.
4. Which ones are good, which one's aren't?
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