Prints from the Ray Witt Picture Co. of Miami

The prints on the picture racks at the auction house had a decidedly 1960s look. They were intriguing, so I answered their call and drew closer for a better view.

The images in some of the pictures were elongated stylized people and animals, but I could find no artists’ signatures beneath the plastic in which they were still wrapped. The print-maker on several was identified in small type at the bottom of each: Ray Witt Picture Co., with cities listed as Coral Gables and South Miami, FL.

The Witt prints were among 10 by companies with such names as Catalda Fine Arts, NYC; Billy Snel and B&M. The others were also in slightly wrinkled plastic, indicating that someone had likely stored them away and forgotten about them.

I Googled right there in the auction house to see what I could learn about the company. The first thing I came across were inquiries on an antiques and arts forum dating back to 2003 from people who were trying to find out about their own prints and the value.

I wasn’t interested in buying any of the pieces, so I moved on to preview other items at the auction house. But I was still curious, and later spent some time with Google. Up popped the same inquiries, so I started reading each one to see what I could learn from them and to see what types of images Witt reproduced. Sometimes, people have a lot more information in their hands than they realize.

One person had two prints that had been passed on by a great aunt, while another found a picture in an attic. Another said his grandparents had purchased a painting of flamingos at a department store in Miami about 60 years ago. Another had an image of a series of kittens; another, some cockatoos. Another had a still life with fish signed by artist named Robert Lyons (I found an artist with that name whose works were similar to the ones at auction). Others had prints of Cubans, Mexicans, Jamaicans, some of them artist-signed.

Artist Jack Amoroso wrote that Ray Witt reproduced several of his paintings in the 1960s. He said the company was around from the 1940s to 1960s, and reproduced artists’ works as both serigraphs and lithographs. He said it became one of the largest picture companies in the South, distributing artwork worldwide. In 2004, an Amoroso bio accompanying the auction of one of his paintings noted that the company had done serigraphs of his watercolor “Americana” (his bio says more than a million were sold in Europe and the United States) and lithographs of his conte and lacquer “Europe.” Here’s one of his pieces by Witt.

After much digging, I found a 1958 Miami News article about Ray Witt and his company under the title “Women Won’t Hang Sexy Girls on Their Walls.” It was an article about what pictures women buy to decorate their walls.

According to the article, Witt’s pictures were sold all over the United States – to such places as hotels, motels, offices and home-furnishing stores. They were silk screens of original watercolors made especially for his company, he said. Most were original artwork by such Miami artists as Amoroso, Phil Brinkman, James Moffitt and Helen Andrews.

Witt said that he would tell each artist what type of image to paint and what size. They could be either horizontal or vertical to fit any wall groupings. The most expensive pictures sold for $20; most sold for less. The article seemed to indicate that the artists painted what Witt thought would sell, and what sold in Miami was different from what sold in New York or the Midwest.

I also found a short obit after Witt’s death on Nov. 22, 1971, in the Miami News and his funeral services. He was member of the South Miami Rotary Club and a graduate of Wayne University in Detroit, according to the newspaper.

I suppose his legacy is that he made fine art accessible to people who would not otherwise be able to afford it.

I wasn’t around when the Witt prints sold, but I’m sure they went for less than $10 or $20. Are they worth any more than that? Probably not, unless they are prints by a named artist and not a million of them are floating around out there somewhere.