GUEST: I have a, uh, painting that was done in Taos, New Mexico, by Bert Phillips.

My grandmother bought this in the '30s.

She bought it directly from the artist.

And I have a thank you letter from the artist right here.

APPRAISER: Well, it is a lovely example of a work by Bert Geer Phillips.

It's oil on board.

He's quite an interesting artist.

He's known for the Western subject matter, but he actually was an East Coast guy.

GUEST: Really?

APPRAISER: So, yeah, he was born in Hudson, New York, in 1868 and started drawing from a very young age, and won awards and really decided that art was gonna be his career.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: So he did study in New York at the Art Students League, and then eventually ended up in Paris, where he studied painting along with important artists like Joseph Henry Sharp and Ernest Blumenschein.

So when he got back to the States, he really had a desire to head out west.

So he and his friend Ernest Blumenschein planned a sketching trip, where they were gonna head out west and eventually end up in Mexico, or so they thought.

So they went out on their adventure and they only made it as far as Taos, because once they got there, I think they decided that was it for them.

GUEST: That was it.

APPRAISER: That was where they wanted to stay.

By 1898, I believe, Phillips had settled as a full-time resident in Taos.

Phillips was one of the first artists, actually the first artist, to move to Taos and was a founding member of that artist colony...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...and really devote the rest of his life to painting in that landscape, he was just so taken by it.

And that's what we see in his work.

He has a reverence for the subject.

He has a romanticism, and I think you can feel the emotion that he felt.

GUEST: Absolutely.

APPRAISER: And there really weren't any tourists or galleries in Taos at that point.

So the way that these artists became known was by kind of banding together and exhibiting their work in other cities.

GUEST: Ah.

APPRAISER: And then they became more well known, and then there was a real...

They created a real demand for the work.

And so the paintings were selling very quickly.

Which also leads me to think that he probably painted this some years before your grandmother purchased it.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: But probably wasn't sitting in the studio for all that long.

This is special not only because it's a lovely painting, but because of the unbroken chain of provenance, the fact that you have the letter that he wrote to your grandmother and even the original check where she paid him for the painting.

I would expect a price tag on this, for a retail value, which would be your insurance value in this case...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...of $35,000.

GUEST: Okay.

Great!

$300 to $35,000.

Pretty good investment.

(both chuckle) APPRAISER: Sure is.