GUEST: In 2021, my father-in-law passed away and my husband inherited this artwork.

The artist is Alexis Jean Fournier and as we went through a-a collection of things of my in-laws we also saw some other pieces, uh, that had his name, uh, his picture and so it-it really had me interested in digging and so I did an ancestry dive, and come to find out the artist, Alexis Jean Fournier, was married to my husband's great-aunt, Emma Frick; was his first wife.

APPRAISER: This is a wonderful oil painting.

It's by Alexis Jean Fournier, as you know.

He was born in St.

Paul, Minnesota, uh, on July 4, 1865.

He trained first in Minneapolis and then, as so many 19th century American artists did, he went to Paris to train.

And he went first to the Académie Julian.

He then traveled around.

Paris and northern France.

And he was especially interested in the Barbizon painters.

And over the 1890s and the 19-1s, he did a whole series of paintings.

He called the series The Home and Haunts of the Barbizon Masters.

And given the architecture and the style, we know that that's clearly something that would have been painted in France, probably would have been painted in the 19-1s, as part of that series.

What makes it special is its light.

That light is just beautiful, but it's a light that's more, very late 19th century or in early 20th century.

And so that's part of the key to knowing about when it would be dated.

It's had a troubled past.

And it's had some condition issues.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And you know what?

When you're 100 years old, you end up with condition issues.

GUEST: (chuckles) APPRAISER: But if you look closely, you can see there's a fair amount of retouch.

If we look up here, you can see sort of some discolored areas.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: It's especially obvious here if we look along the edge, you can see where it's been retouched.

The other thing that's going on, especially with the sky, is the painting is starting to cup.

So instead of lying flat on the canvas, the edges are just starting to cup up.

Right now, it's pretty stable, but at some point, you will probably lose more paint.

Condition affects value.

Other than condition, the thing we tend to harp on is provenance.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: This was in the f-- the artist's family.

GUEST: Yes.

Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: You can't get better provenance than that.

In its current condition, if it were to be brought up at auction, we'd estimate it at $20,000 to $30,000.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: I would recommend conservation.

When everything is properly, uh, laid back down and consolidated, you're probably looking more like $35,000 to $55,000 for an auction estimate.

GUEST: Okay, wow.