Rooms by the Sea by Edward Hopper- Thanks to www.canvasreplica.com
My record for a sale of a single item is $115,000 and this painting has been the pride of my 45 years in the Antique and Collectible business. The joy that I received from finding this painting by Frederick Morgan was more about the discovery than the money, if you can believe that.
Well, two days ago, I almost went into orbit for a while when I discovered a painting by Edward Hopper in a lady's house. She had asked me to come by and look at a round oak table. My eyes were immediately drawn to this painting and I knew there was something special about it.
I had known the lady for some time and she had become a friend of my wife and rode the train with her to work. The phone rang one afternoon and the voice on the other end of the phone asked if I knew who I was talking to and my response was of course. This is when she asked me to drop by about the table. Since she lives close to me in a very up scale neighborhood, I made the appointment for the next day. The table was all in pieces but then there was the painting.
I hurried home to research the piece and found to my amazement that Hopper's works can bring millions if the subject matter is right. Guess what? The subject matter in this painting was what you would want it to be, cubic and surreal. Now my heart was really beating fast and I couldn't wait to return to her home. I gave her a call to see when the next day she could see me and we set the appointment for about 10:30 the next morning. But while I had her on the phone I thought that I would ask her a few more questions, like is there anything on the back. She, being very gracious, set the phone down and removed the painting from her wall and said "Yes there is a paper that says who it is by , what gallery it was shown in, the size and who the owner was." At that time I shared with her what the possibilities were for the painting and if it turned out to be what I thought, she could pay me a commission for selling it. This is when I needed to take another heart pill because she had just described a show label on the back of the painting and that was about all I needed to hear before announcing it the real thing. By my first estimates this piece could be worth $2,000,000 to $10,000,000. My mind started to really go to work then thinking about where can we insure it, where would be best place to sell it and even how I would write a book about this adventure.
I have written that I am now on the hunt for something that I can sell for $500,000 and I thought that I had found it. Not being able to sleep, I spent the next few hours on my computer until my eyes wouldn't stay up any longer and I headed to bed. Up at the crack of dawn it was back to the computer. This was when my heart began to sink. During my search I ran across the listing for reproduction paintings and Hopper's name was listed. Still with all the information that I had and having actually held the painting and with the label on the back, I thought that it might be the real thing. But the true test would be the size so the next morning at 10:30 I was on her door step. She had taken the painting upstairs so she retrieved it and I sat on her couch slightly shaking with the tape measure in my hand. It measured 33 by 23 inches and this told me what I wanted to know because the real painting measures 40 1/8 by 29 inches. The suspense was over but I still had, for a moment, that excitement that is still to come for me, but it will have to wait for awhile. Yes that $500,000 item is sitting in a home, garage or building and I am on its trail and there isn't a way it will escape me forever.
I am sure you are asking if I was disappointed and I would be less than honest if I said no but still I would have wanted to have this experience all over again even if it ended the same way because I know that day is coming when the piece I find will be real.
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