Art Find: Carpinteria Flea Market

(Originally published in Coastal View News, August 25, 2011)

When it comes to discovering great art you know digging around at a flea market, thrift store -- or even your garage -- might just be the next great treasure hunt!

What makes art valuable? The answer is this: it depends. Art appraisers base value on such factors as the artist’s notoriety, the condition of the artwork, art market trends, as well as authenticity, provenance, and subject. An art appraiser also has to consider whether the appraisal report is for insurance, resale, donation, or estate purposes.

When we asked readers to submit artworks for this month’s Art Find we discovered a great local Santa Barbara area find. Our Carpinteria resident went treasure hunting about a year ago at the Carpinteria flea market where she came upon a painting of a hawk. She did not recognize the artist and decided to move on. An admirer of hawks, she said she couldn’t stop thinking about it and decided to go back. She bought it for $20.

As an art appraiser, my first big clue was the signature on the lower right corner identifying it as painting by Ethelinda. After some research I discovered Ethelinda Robbins studied art at the University of the Pacific in California. After a traveling throughout the world, she worked as an illustrator in Hawaii and New York City. How this painting got to Santa Barbara we don't know.

Upon moving back to California in 1969, she stopped doing illustration and focused on painting. She also dropped her last name and went simply by Ethelinda. While working in Santa Fe, New Mexico Ethelinda became entranced by the allure of the Southwestern deserts. She painted portraits of Native Americans, wildlife, and horses.

In my art appraisal, I found that collectors of Ethelinda’s work tend to pay the highest amounts for her well-known horse paintings. Paintings currently listed for sale in galleries range from $8,500-$27,000. Auction records are lower, ranging from $2,000-$4,000. Still, the scarcity and size of Ethelinda’s work gives “Hawk Portrait” of a strong market value. While the painting appears to need cleaning, it is in good condition. A demand exists for Ethelinda’s paintings.

The Appraisers Association of America defines Auction Replacement Value as “a reasonable amount in terms of US dollars which would be required to replace a property with another of similar age, quality, origin, appearance, provenance and condition within a reasonable length of time in an appropriate and relevant auction market.”

At auction this painting would be estimated between $5,000-$7,000. A treasure indeed. . .

Please submit your painting, drawing, or sculpture for next month’s Art Find. Email Us a photo and brief description.

Alissa Anderson Campbell is an art appraiser for Anderson Shea Art Appraisals. She specializes in appraising American art and European art for insurance, resale value, estate, tax, and charitable donation. Campbell is a member of the Appraisers Association of America (USPAP-compliant). Ph. 805.616.2781/www.andersonshea-artappraisals.com

Peter Ellenshaw - Realism in California art

I recently completed an art appraisal on a Peter Ellenshaw (1913-2007) painting. Hailing from London, England,  Ellenshaw became one of California's most revered coastal landscape painters.

As a Santa Barbara art appraiser, I see many of Peter Ellenshaw's works in Santa Barbara, as he settled here during his final years. Ellenshaw is best known as a landscape artist, whose precise painting technique achieved a photorealist quality. Art collectors often think they are looking at a photograph rather than a painting.

(Courtesy R.W Norton Art Foundation)

One of Ellenshaw's earliest jobs as an artist was during an apprenticeship under W. Percy Day, a British film special effects artist and painter. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Ellenshaw returned to the film industry as an artist for MGM. In the late 1940s, Walt Disney offered Ellenshaw a position in the studio as an artist.

In 1953, Ellenshaw moved his family to California where began his career as a Disney illustrator and stage designer at Disneyland. California's rich landscape bewitched Ellenshaw -- who became entranced by the ocean. The artist began spending weekends painting the waves and beaches of Santa Barbara, Laguna Beach, and the southern California coast.

He also began a lifelong association with the Hammer Galleries in New York. During the 1970s, Ellenshaw moved to Ireland, and he began painting the green landscapes and Irish coastline. He exhibited works at the American Embassy in Dublin. Ellenshaw traveled throughout Europe and traveled to Giverny, France where Monet painted his famous water lillies.

Ellenshaw also painted in the Mojave desert, capturing the arid landscapes of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, and the San Bernardino area. Ellenshaw also painted the cityscapes of San Francisco -- but finally settled in Santa Barbara, California where he continued to paint his famous seascapes of the Central California coastline.

At auction Peter Ellenshaw's paintings have sold for between $10,000-$30,000 depending on the  condition of the artwork, size, quality, authenticity, provenance, and style.

Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum - Home Show

Courtesy: Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum

Last week I decided to docent for Santa Barbara's contemporary art museum, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (CAF) Home Show, Revisited.  The site-specific show breaks down to the notion of exhibiting work in a traditional white cube art museum  -- and, instead, displays art in people's homes. The curators of the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum invited 10 Los Angeles-based contemporary artists to "reconsider the societal and cultural notion of “home” by creating site-specific installations in residences throughout Santa Barbara."

The Home Show includes works by internationally-known artists Piero Golia, Evan Holloway, Bettina Hubby, Florian Morlat, Kori Newkirk, Jennifer Rochlin, Ry Rocklen, Kirsten Stoltmann, Stephanie Taylor, and Jennifer West. The exhibition has been reviewed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Santa Barbara Independent.

The exhibition is kind of like a treasure hunt, asking visitors to traverse homes in Santa Barbara all the way to Carpinteria to see artworks. The Home Show inhabitants must welcome visitors into their homes every weekend  from 11a.m. - 5p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through July 17.

As an art appraiser I'm often asked to visit private homes to appraise artworks, so I thought the exhibition was an interesting concept to invite strangers into peoples homes. By inviting the public into private homes, these ten artists explore concepts of privacy, voyeurism, and status.

I served as a docent in the home of art dealer Candice Assassi’s contemporary loft in Carpinteria, California.  Assasi's home looks out onto a beachfront campground populated by summertime campers.  Artist Kori Newkirk decided to play with the exchange of viewership and voyeurism.  Newkirk mounted a neon sign to a roof beam facing the campground that reads “No Visible Neurosis.” Written backwards, viewers must look at it with a mirror from the front porch.  While looking out toward the campers, the viewer must also look at oneself in the mirror, while viewing the the neon sign. The artpiece attempts to make a commentary on a visitor's judgement of a stranger's home -- and perhaps the person in the mirror as well.

Art appraisers often seen great paintings, sculpture, and drawings hidden away in private collections. While it's interesting to see art on museum walls it is magical to see how people live around art in their everyday lives. This exhibition is a great way of inviting visitors into the personal spaces of those who surround themselves with art.

Millard Sheets: California Watercolorist

Some of my favorite artists to appraise are those California artists who worked in and around Santa Barbara. Millard Sheets (1907-1989) who was born in Pomona, California and became one of the most prolific artists on the West Coast.

"Padua Olive Hills Drive" 1940 (Image Courtesy: Otis Art Institute)

Millard Sheets grew up on a ranch and developed a love for horses and the rustic life of Southern California. Sheets gained his art degree at the Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles (1925-29). As a young artist during the 1920s, he became familiar with the work of the American scene painters, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, who were part of a movement called American Regionalism. Wood and Benton were interested in painting American life. Sheets decided to focus on his native Los Angeles area.

As an art appraiser in Santa Barbara, I often come upon collectors of the California Watercolor school. Millard Sheets, Milford Zornes, Rex Brandt, Phil Dyke, George Post and others developed the California Watercolor style of painting. These artists used watercolor instead of oil to paint on-site and outdoors.

Depicting daily life of everyday people, laborers, and immigrants, Sheets captured the struggles and tribulations of Californians during the 1920s. The California Watercolorists found watercolor and paper a more versatile and easy medium to transport than oil. Up until the 1920s, watercolor had been seen simply as a sketching tool for artists, not a medium in itself. Sheets and his colleagues changed this.

Upon completing his schooling, Sheets decided to travel to Europe, where he became exposed to the modernist movements of the 1930s. Millard Sheets returned to California and began teaching at Chouinard. He also taught at Scripps College and Otis Art Institute, where he became an influential member of the art community. He was a member of the California Art Club; American Watercolor Society; Bohemian Club; National Academy.

During the Great Depression he began painting under the WPA as part of the team of muralist painters. Sheets painted more than 100 murals  and mosaics in and around Claremont, Pomona, and greater Los Angeles. While some have been destroyed many still remain.

With his signature style, his works depict the landscapes of Pomona, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and throughout California. Sheets eventually moved north to the Mendocino coast and painted throughout the Bay Area.

As an art appraiser, Millard Sheets paintings are among the most sought-after and valuable of the California Watercolorists. His unique aesthetic and prolific output place him as one of California's much beloved artists.

American Artist & Realist - Alexander Brook

Black and White, 1941

Courtesy Smithsonian Museum of American Art

I recently appraised two early drawings by the California artist Alexander Brook (1898-1980). Part of the bohemian circle of artists living in the Pasadena area during the mid-century, Brook refused to adopt the growing movement of Abstract Expressionism. He loved painting the American scene in all of its gritty beauty.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, the young man began his artistic studies at the Art Students League during 1914-1918.  Brook studied with John C. Johansen, Frank V. DuMond, George Bridgeman and became acquainted with fellow artists Reginald Marsh, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, among others. These artists formed a movement of art known as American Realism. A member of the Society of Independent Artists, Brook and his colleagues refused to be part of the National Academy of Design.

During the Great Depression, Brook traveled and worked throughout the South, including Georgia and Florida. He began exhibiting his work in New York at the Downtown Gallery the National Academy of Design, Rehn Gallery, Knoedler, and the Carnegie Institute International Exhibition of Modern Painting (1930). He also began teaching at the Art Students League

When doing an art appraisals of paintings by artists like Brook, I am also amazed by their enduring commitment to a certain method and technique. Alex Brook was a realist painter who refused to adopt Abstract Expressionism during the post-war period. While the values of works by Jackson Pollock and Sam Francis, Brook was adamant about realism. His works consist of figurative work, still-lifes, and landscapes, and figures, often of women.  He later traveled to Europe, where he was influenced by the works of Picasso, Goya.

Brook lived in the Los Angeles area and exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He became a member of the San Francisco Art Association and received awards at the Art Institute of Chicago (1929), the Pennsylvania Academy (1931), the Guggenheim Fellowship (1931).

Desert Finds: Palm Desert Art Appraisal Day

This weekend I was lucky enough to be part of the Palm Desert Historical Society's Art Appraisal Day. I was asked to be the appraiser for an Antiques Roadshow-style event which was part of the month long Desertscapes.

The annual event takes place every April focused on celebrating the art of the desert. The Palm Desert Historical Society did a great job finding desert locals to bring their Southwestern and California paintings, drawings, prints, and photos for an informal evaluation.

I saw mixture of great southwestern art, including artworks by Conrad Buff, Edgar Payne, James Swinnterton, among lesser known Palm Springs artists.

The best part was meeting the interesting people who found these treasures at flea markets, auctions, or inherited them from family members. While many of the artworks were of a modest value, some of them were Western artists considered among the best in California and the Southwest.

The desert art historian, blogger, and writer Ann Japenga, who helped organize the Desert Appraisal Day,  recently sent me a great article on an art discovery.

A Connecticut man recently decided to sell two oil paintings that hung in his basement. After an estate removal company offered the man a measley $125 a piece,the decided to get a proper appraisal done by a certified appraiser. As it turns out, he had two paintings by one of the most important American artists of the 19th century (with auction records of up to $2.5 million!)

You can read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/arts/design/jasper-f-cropsey-paintings-of-the-hudson-river-school-turn-up.html?_r=1

 Jasper Francis Cropsey "Autumn Landscape, Sugar Loaf, Orange County, New York" Jasper Francis Cropsey, ca.1870-75/Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Art Find of the Month - William Stubbs

This month's ART FIND submission is an interesting work by the East Coast painter William Stubbs. As an art appraiser in California I often deal with Western art, but I have a keen interest in American art done on the other side of the country.

After watching too many episodes of Antiques Roadshow, all of us hopes to find a treasure at a weekend estate sale. This time, our reader seems to have done so! Back in 2008 our reader and avid treasure-hunter headed out to an estate sale on the north shore of Long Island.  Here, he found this painting by the famous marine painter William Stubbs. 

Painted in 1880 this painting, "Three Masted Ship in Storm" appears to be a quintessential ship portrait done by Stubbs.  William Pierce Stubbs (1842–1909) was born in Orrington, Maine. As the son of a shipmaster, Stubbs learned the architecture of a ship by working on it. It is thought that he became the master of his father's ship between 1863-73. In 1871 he painted  his first ship portrait and by 1876 he was known as a Boston area marine painter. Stubbs shared a studio with the artist Wesley Webber and continued painting well-known ships in the area.

William Pierce Stubbs exhibited on of his early paintings in Boston's International Marine Exhibition of 1889, where he gained acclaim as a young American artist. Stubbs produced a small body of work and is acknowledged by the American art market as a professional and listed artist. Stubbs worked throughout the Eastern seaboard, creating a number of ship paintings. His paintings are held in the collections at the Mariner's Museum, the Mystic Seaport Museum, the Beverly Historical Society, the Philadelphia Marine Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.

William Pierce Stubbs has a highly recognizable style. Most of his works depict the profile of a ship with a focus on detail. He often includes the name of this ship within the painting. Known for his dramatic depictions of ominous weather and rough waves encompassing the ship, Stubbs almost always signed his paintings in red. Many of his paintings document important historical ships of the period.

William Pierce Stubbs current values are based on auction records and gallery pricing. Estimating an artwork's value takes into account the condition, size, authenticity, provenance, and the current economy. When estimating a value, an appraiser also has to consider the popularity of an artist’s style -- and whether the artwork is being sold at a gallery or auction.

Many galleries and auction houses on the East coast sell William Pierce Stubb's work. "Three Masted Ship in Storm" is a large painting and if it is in good condition, an early work of this quality could be highly sought after by collectors. Values for Stubbs work have a wide range of pricing which, like every art appraisal, are based on age, condition, rarity, artistic merit, technical workmanship, current trends and availability of an article.  The highest values are paid for famous, named ships. In an auction, this painting would likely be estimated between $5,000-$7,000, and perhaps more if the ship's name could be identified. A treasure indeed!

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Alissa J. Anderson is an art appraiser for Anderson Shea Art Appraisals in Santa Barbara, California. She specializes in appraisals for insurance purposes, resale value, estate tax, and charitable donation. She is a member of the Appraisers Association of America (USPAP-compliant), qualified to appraise American paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Anderson also works as an art writer and curator. (www.andersonshea-artappraisals.com)


©2011 Alissa Anderson, Santa Barbara, California. All Rights Reserved. This is not an appraisal. Authenticity is not guaranteed. This article is for educational purposes only. None of the contents of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Anderson Shea Art Appraisals, and the appraiser’s signature. )