Reader asks about artist Etelka Greenfield

Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources to help them determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do some preliminary research to get them started. So, if market values are mentioned, they are based on prices I find on the web, not appraisals for insurance purposes that I suggest for items that have been determined to be of great value.

Today’s question is about the value of a painting by African American artist Etelka J. Greenfield.

Question:

I have had an oil painting by Etelka Greenfield called “Uncle Raphael” for the past 50 years. It is signed by Etelka and dated 1946. Can you give me any information and value for this piece? I contacted the Smithsonian in DC and they directed me to this website. I am interested in information and value with perhaps selling this piece. Thank you in advance for your help and time.

Answer:

The reader came across Etelka J.(possibly Joseph) Greenfield’s name in a blog post I wrote three years ago about the women artists who were included in the annual Pyramid Club exhibits in Philadelphia. I was happy to hear that she had a painting by Greenfield. I go to auctions all the time and haven’t come across one yet.

Unfortunately, I could find very little info about her. The Smithsonian Institution has documents pertaining to her as an artist. The Research and Archives Library at the Detroit Institute of Arts also seems to have a folder on her, as well as the Archives at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

As for the value of the painting, that’s hard to say. I could find only one painting by Greenfield, and appraisals are made based partly on the prices that an artist’s works have summoned in the past. An artist’s market value is based on how much people are willing to pay for his or her individual works. That’s tough to figure out if the artist has few works in the marketplace. And Greenfield is practically anonymous, having painted at a time when artists didn’t exactly promote themselves.

Greenfield, who was said to have died in 1949, was a contemporary of the artist Laura Wheeler Waring, who was much better known and is a listed artist. She died in 1948 and the Pyramid Club exhibition that year was held in her memory. Waring’s works can fetch five figures, as in the $16,000 paid last year at auction for a 1935 oil painting titled “Girl in a Red Dress.”

The painting by Greenfield – whom I believe like Waring was a Philadelphia artist – sold for $550 in September 2010 at Stanton Auctions in Hampton, MA. A still life of flowers, it was called “Design For Centerpiece” and had an exhibition label on the back. The same piece had been sold a month earlier at a Goodwill store outside Philadelphia for $361.

The auction house described Greenfield as “a ground breaking African American artist and a member of the Pyramid Club of Philadelphia.” I learned later that she was not an African American artist.

For nearly 20 years, the club held one of the pre-eminent black art exhibits in the country. It was founded in 1937 as a cultural outlet for black professional men, and began its art exhibitions, which featured some of the country’s top African American artists, in 1941. The club itself was not open to women but its exhibitions were.

The reader didn’t send me a photo of the painting, so it was difficult to both research it and offer a value judgment on it. I asked her to send a photograph.

I’d suggest that she have the painting appraised first and then consigned to an auction house. Some auction houses hold free days where they offer eyeball appraisals of items.

The reader can find auction houses near her via auctionzip.com. She should check them out – either by Googling their websites or going to one of their auctions – to make sure she’s comfortable with them. Or she could have an official appraisal done, but that will cost her. Since the painting seems to be worth less than $1,000, paying for an appraisal may not be cost-effective.

I never heard back from the reader. I hope she was able to determine the value of the painting.