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tumaviol · ‎05-24-2021

I bought this at an estate sale. Can somebody tell me if it has any value. I'm almost positive it came from the Robert sills auction house. Due to all the other paintings that were there had tags from Robert sills. Let me know if the pictures aren't enough for you to look at I can send more. I know there was a scandal about signatures when this was bought. Other than that I have no other information.

argon38 · ‎05-24-2021

@tumaviol wrote:
every time I put it on Google recognition Max savvy and gruppe always come up.

There is no significance in this. If you search for a painting of a harbor scene and it can't find an exact match for the image, Google will show you lots of harbor scenes painted by different artists. If you search for a painting of a young woman with a slight smile, Google will likely bring up the Mona Lisa! The only link is the common subject-matter - it doesn't imply a connection between your picture and the work of any well-known artist.

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melda58 · ‎05-24-2021

From what I can see of the signature, it looks like B. Bippert. I found a K. Bippert whose work has some similarities to yours, but the first initial is of course different (see below). I also found an old listing (no image available) for a B. Bippert painting with asking price of $7.50 - not to say that's the value of yours.

https://www.artmajeur.com/bippart

Rita

tumaviol · ‎05-24-2021

Thank you Rita I did my research as far as I could go to. I got the same results but then I looked into the gallery. And it seems they had a scandal about having people sign those paintings as a auctioned them off with familiar famous painters. The artist that painted these supposedly starving artists in Europe at the time, so I was just wondering if anybody recognized the work. and every time I put it on Google recognition Max savvy and gruppe always come up.

melda58 · ‎05-24-2021

@tumaviol wrote:
Thank you Rita I did my research as far as I could go to. I got the same results but then I looked into the gallery. And it seems they had a scandal about having people sign those paintings as a auctioned them off with familiar famous painters. The artist that painted these supposedly starving artists in Europe at the time, so I was just wondering if anybody recognized the work. and every time I put it on Google recognition Max savvy and gruppe always come up.

But yours isn't signed by a "familiar famous" painter, so it seems a moot point. Maybe I just don't understand the issue. Even if it was auctioned along with paintings with fake signatures that were copied by starving artists, yours is not one of those and there doesn't seem to be any direct connection to this gallery in any case.

Rita

argon38 · ‎05-24-2021

@tumaviol wrote:
every time I put it on Google recognition Max savvy and gruppe always come up.

There is no significance in this. If you search for a painting of a harbor scene and it can't find an exact match for the image, Google will show you lots of harbor scenes painted by different artists. If you search for a painting of a young woman with a slight smile, Google will likely bring up the Mona Lisa! The only link is the common subject-matter - it doesn't imply a connection between your picture and the work of any well-known artist.

tumaviol · ‎05-24-2021

And I put the image on Google I didn't type it in.... So if you take a picture of a smiling curly hair redhead with blue eyes and it doesn't have the exact person match, are you saying it will automatically bring up mona Lisa too? I should test your theory since you about any theory of mine down...

maxine*j · ‎05-24-2021

Can you tell me what evidence you have that this came from Robert Sills Gallery? I think everything from Robert Sills Gallery was labelled, and you say other paintings at the sale were so labelled. The fact that this one is not labelled would make me think it is not from Sills. Sills was not an auction house, per se, by the way, but it did run charity auctions.

Can you tell me where you read about a scandal involving Sills? I've never heard accusations against them for any illegal activity at all, and certainly not for selling fakes.

Nearly everything they sold was decorative and, yes, of course a lot of it was "starving artist" work, sofa art, decorator art, whatever you want to call it. So, yes, of course the signatures were often made-up names. That's the common practice. But the names were not those of famous artists, done to fool anyone.

That sort of generic, decorative art was simply Sills' stock-in-trade. That doesn't mean it was bad or not worth hanging on a wall, only that its moneatry value will never be very great.

If I'm wrong about any of this, correct me.

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argon38 · ‎05-24-2021

@tumaviol wrote:
And I put the image on Google I didn't type it in.... So if you take a picture of a smiling curly hair redhead with blue eyes and it doesn't have the exact person match, are you saying it will automatically bring up mona Lisa too? I should test your theory since you about any theory of mine down...

I used the Mona Lisa as a humorous example to put the point across. Google image search does bring up visually similar results, but many artists have painted harbor scenes. Google presents these images to you in the belief that you likely have an interest in harbor scenes generally, given the nature of your search. If the image search results are leading you to hope that a prominent artist might have painted your scene while hiding their identity under the pseudonym "B. Bippert," then yes, I'm afraid I would regard that theory as a non-starter.

argon38 · ‎05-24-2021

@maxine*j wrote:
Can you tell me where you read about a scandal involving Sills? I've never heard accusations against them for any illegal activity at all, and certainly not for selling fakes.

I've never heard of the gallery before, but I did come across this:

https://www.justanswer.com/antiques/8pxmf-certificate-authenticity-robert-sills.html?__cf_chl_jschl_...

maxine*j · ‎05-25-2021

Thanks, Argon!

It is worth noting that in reply to the questioner's comment that his aunt was "taken in by this [Sills] gallery," the appraiser replies:

"Let me assure you your aunt wasn't taken, the gallery was! The Dali forgery situation is quite a scandal, but nearly all galleries who sold the pieces legitimately thought they were correct."

So I'm still not seeing any evidence for OP's assertion that Sills was dodgy.

And, of course, I'm still not seeing an evidence OP's painting came from Sills, although it is certainly the sort of work Sills mostly handled.

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