The Painting Behind The Painting, It Pays to Look

A VICTORIAN FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH BY A GRAVENHURST STUDIO, FOUND IN ORILLIA. DO YOU KNOW THIS FAMILY?

ARE THERE ANY ANTIQUE TREASURES LEFT TO FIND? IT'S THE REASON I WILL DIE AS AN ANTIQUE HUNTER

1,001 REASONS WE WON'T ABANDON OUR MISSION TO FIND ELUSIVE TREASURE

ACTUALLY, THE ABOVE-STATED "1,001 REASONS" I REMAIN AS AN ANTIQUE DEALER / COLLECTOR, UNTIL DEATH, CREATES THAT EXPECTED PARTING OF THE WAYS, COMES DOWN TO ONLY ONE SIGNIFICANT REASON…..THE OTHER 1,000 ALL RELATE TO THE SAME THING. THE TREASURE. THE BIG FIND. THE SO-CALLED HOLY GRAIL WE'VE ALL BEEN SEARCHING FOR…..IN OUR RESPECTIVE AREAS OF COLLECTING EXPERTISE. ARE WE GREEDY? FUNNY THING, THAT! IF YOU WERE ASKED THIS, IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING THE INTRODUCTION ABOVE, YOU'D PROBABLY ANSWER AFFIRMATIVELY……."ANTIQUE DEALERS ARE A GREEDY LOT!" IF HOWEVER, I HADN'T OPENED WITH THIS BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA, YOU MIGHT HAVE SAID THAT ANTIQUE DEALERS AREN'T ANY MORE GREEDY THAN MOST IN THE GENERAL POPULATION. IF I WAS TO SEND OUT A QUESTIONNAIRE TO ALL THE ANTIQUE DEALERS IN THE WORLD, I CAN'T IMAGINE HONEST ANSWERS COMING BACK THAT SUGGEST, "OF COURSE WE ARE GREEDY; WE WANT MORE AND MORE WEALTH." MAKING BIG FINDS IS A BIG DEAL, BUT SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH, IT'S OFTEN TIMES SPAWNS A SERIOUS AND DEPRESSING LET-DOWN FOLLOWING SUCH MOMENTOUS OCCASIONS…..AND GETTING A BIG CHEQUE AS A RESULT, LIKELY ISN'T GOING TO SATISFY THE URGE TO CARRY-ON. THIS ISN'T UNIQUE TO THE ANTIQUE TRADE BY ANY MEANS. BUT WE'RE THE ONES WHO APPEAR SO HELL-BENT ON MAKING BIG MONEY AS A DAY TO DAY ENTERPRISE. IT WOULD, OF COURSE, BE HIGHLY HYPOCRITICAL TO SUGGEST WE DON'T LIKE TO PROFIT FROM OUR WORK, BUT IT IS WORTH NOTING, THAT EVEN MULTI-MILLIONAIRE DEALERS AND COLLECTORS, STILL SEEK OUT THE ADVENTURE OF "THE HUNT." LOOK AT THOSE WHO SEEK OUT SUNKEN TREASURE SHIPS AND UNDERWATER BOOTY……PIRATE LOOY, BURIED TREASURE, AND YUP, EVEN THE HOLY GRAIL OF THE TEMPLAR KNIGHTS……THEIR MYSTERY-LADEN, YET TO BE UNCOVERED, HIDDEN STASH.

I have never yet, with all the scrounging and thousands of miles invested in over thirty years, found an original A.Y. Jackson sketch. Not even a hanky he may have stuffed in his pocket, on sketching trips. I've never found his cap, an old sweater he used to wear while painting, or a glass he used to drink from while at home. But by golly, I've found three of his autographs on books, all signed opposite to what he wrote in capital letters, on his art panels. On books, and for autographs he gave admirers, he penned his name as, "a.y. jackson." No kidding. It would be an unbelievable moment, to one day, find an original Jackson tucked behind another piece of art in a frame, or in a job-lot of auction items, purchased for a tiny bid. But it has happened similarly to antique / art dealers and collectors, and every time news of this spreads throughout our profession, it regenerates our interest generally, and profoundly, to carry on the "Quest." As I have said before, beware of the dealer or expert in a particular collecting field, who advises that there are no good finds left out there. These folks are just trying to clear the field, and keep you out of their way. There are no shortage of good finds.

Those who make a good living in the antique field, are most likely, particularly savvy at networking with other dealers. While I've written about generalist dealers, such as myself……having no pre-set rule about what I will buy and sell (there are a few exceptions), many specialist dealers as well, have a list of ready buyers for what they may come across, by happenstance, out on the hustings. They may collect Canadian or American landscape art, but if they were to find an abstract, by someone like Canadian artist, Harold Town, or a nice example of American legend, Jackson Pollock's, paint-dripped art boards, it would be natural and obvious to either acquire on spec., or make a couple of phone calls to those in the art community, who would most want those works. A lady in the United States did buy a suspected Pollock at a yard sale for under fifty bucks. It's problem stemmed from the fact it wasn't signed, but gave every appearance of an original. We are never too specialized, to walk past, and ignore a quality antique that possibly can turn a profit at some point. I might not care for Henry Moore's sculptures, like the City of Toronto's "Archer," but I'd climb over a tall building, while naked, to own one. I can learn to like stuff. I'd love to have his autograph. So depending on the circumstance we are faced with, we can change, and network our good finds to someone else……who will potentially, be so happy with the discovery, we will be handsomely rewarded…….possibly spawning a trade for something we do want. I had a Coca Cola collector who did this frequently. He would trade me all kinds of neat stuff, from boxing gloves to cricket bats, for any old Coke memorabilia I would find on our hunts. The same can happen at the high end as well, just as it does on our level of hunting and gathering, what may be seen as nothing more than average knick-knacks, from week to week. Well sometimes, us low echelon dealers can come up with surprises as well……and we'll be only too glad to contact a stratosphere dealer who sells Chippendale, or fine art, or an auction house, if it means we can make enough profit to buy a new muffler for the company van.

Quite a few years ago now, I was in an antique shop operated by a European chap, who was running his business in an industrial park. There were two distinct sections, that required crossing from one block of the building, over a green space, into the annex about fifty yards opposite. He had some neat pieces and had only been opened a few months when we visited. When I antique-hunt, I will gladly talk to folks, and the vendor obviously, but when this happens, I stop shopping entirely. There are trade secrets I will never reveal, and I certainly won't allow myself to be studied by an associate dealer. If I continue to shop and talk, I can't focus properly, and I am much more prone to making a bad purchase. There are things I study, and angles I examine, on a subject piece, that could tip-off a vendor, that he has somehow under-researched and under-valued the specific object of my immediate affections. This gentleman would not take his eyes off me. I don't fault him for this, because he didn't know us, and truthfully, watching your clientele is a measure of preventative maintenance. This guy wasn't giving me any room, to examine anything without offering his companion commentary…..giving many reasons why I should buy what was in my hand. Suzanne was sliding under the radar, looking at fabric antiques. He was obviously a chauvinist, because he determined early on, I was the guy with the fat wallet. How wrong it was to pre-judge in this fashion, as I am usually always without more than a few coins for the parking meter. Suzanne is my manager, and I never make a major purchase without full discussion with her. I trust her judgement.

I also don't get along with "close-talkers," and this chap wanted to climb into my ear. Every now and again I'd turn suddenly, in order to change direction, and I'd almost hit his cheek with my large beak. Finally the guy found Suzanne, with a large pile of vintage fabrics…..possibly a quilt if memory serves, and left me for a few moments to browse unimpeded. So I found an interesting landscape that I suspected was the handiwork of George Thomson, brother of legendary Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson. It wasn't signed but it was in Thomson's style…..which was very much different than his brother's art panels. I had quite a few greeting cards that had George Thomson prints on the front, and I had already owned three of his originals, purchased in Gravenhurst, so I knew there was a ninety percent chance the one I was holding was the result of a Thomson brush. In Muskoka, by the way, Thomson used to paint with his artist friend Bob Everett (the pharmacist-artist), and if you were to look at the work of both men, side by side, you might agree they shared styles as well as picnic lunches, while out sketching.

The dealer spotted me looking at the small framed landscape, and almost leapt over a dining-room table and chair, to get to me before I put it back on the shelf. He nattered on and on, and was splashing my cheek with water droplets from his rather noxious breath. So trying to step back to get a little "me" space, he obviously felt he needed to emphasize how important it was to make a sale on an obviously slow Saturday. "You like that painting don't you?" he asked, grabbing my shoulder like my grandfather used to do, when he wanted me to stop picking at his rose bushes. Before I could answer anything at all, he blurted, "If your wife buys those quilts, I'll give you that landscape for twenty bucks." I could have kissed that guy on the lips and stroked his forehead. I knew that Suzanne had that tell-tale inner glow that was subtly, but noticeably radiating out her pores, as a "yes" aura…..so it didn't take me long to shake the man's hand, and state with gentlemanly affirmation, "Sir, I will accept your generous offer," while inaudibly asking that he never, ever, glom onto me again. So the bottom line of the hunt and gather episode, was that we got two "as is" but easy to repair quilts (Suzanne does this), and quite a nice Thomsonesque landscape, presumably of either Algonquin or North Muskoka. I sold it to a collector an hour after it was offered at a sale we were attending in the Village of Windermere, on Muskoka's Lake Rosseau.

So what's so interesting about this? The Thomson panel wasn't signed, so the value was about half what it would have been, with the usual provenance? The exception? The out-of-the-ordinary situation? Well, that would be the early 1800's folk art painting of a sailboat that was wedged behind the Thomson landscape, that someone had used as a backing….for whatever reason. I won't suggest to you that this happens all the time, but it does occur more frequently than you might suspect. The Thomson was sold for $150, and the folk art sailboat, went for just over $200. Not bad for a twenty dollar investment. In fairness, I did not know there was a second painting tacked into that very modern looking frame. But this is what was being sold, and this is the luck of the Irish antique dealer. In the past decade, I have found at least a dozen doubles, when detaching the original frames, and probably another dozen vintage photographs that were also used as backing material. It's not uncommon to find that an artist, when framing his or her own work, will often use another of their paintings, they disapprove of, as padding for the art work they want to showcase. I will sell them together, in this case. I've had two this year, that were painted on both sides, one of these, the artist, in my opinion, had put the best watercolor in the back….as compared to what had been selected as the best art work.

On another occasion, I went to a garage sale just before it wrapped up, and a gentleman I knew, basically refused to sell me individual books I had pulled out of a collection of ten jammed boxes. He wanted me to take all the books off his hands. The price was right, but most of the books were damaged and would have to be recycled. The books I wanted were "money" titles, and signed first editions, so I had to avoid getting angry, as I really wanted to hang onto my finds. I tried to reason with him, but he just kept turning his back on me. I asked Suzanne to deal with him, and he did the same thing……"Take them all, or take none, it's the same to me." Oh I hate that line of reasoning. So his pig-headed compromise was to give us a fantastic deal on the lot. Ten dollars takes them all. I would have given him twenty for the five in my hands. But he wanted them gone in entirety. So we paid him the ten dollars, and the boys loaded them into the van. When I got home, with Suzanne still frowning like a Victorian matron, I stood at the back of the van, with Andrew and Robert, looking through some of the books to see how many we could salvage. Andrew opened one book, and he started yelling, "Dad, dad you won't believe it," and there in his outstretched hand were five tall-boy hockey cards (large format paper stock) from the 1960's original six teams, of the National Hockey League, in very good condition. Those cards not only made up for the ten bucks we paid for the lot of books, but bought us a nice Sunday dinner out, and thirty dollars on top of that profit. And yes, we find many interesting and salable materials stored inside books, including money and real four leaf clovers.

Finds like this, through a career as long as ours, keeps us intrigued, and motivated to carry-on the antique hunt. If you're a collector / dealer yourself, you have many similar stories undoubtedly, which makes the enterprise a little more entertaining…..than most people realize, when discussing us, and our profession in our absence.

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