Antiques Road guest refuses to sell painting worth thousands bought for £200 'Goodness!'
ANTIQUES ROADSHOW expert Dendy Easton left his guests gobsmacked when he valued a well-loved painting of theirs, but they refused to sell the pricey item.
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Antiques Roadshow visited Aston Hall, in Birmingham, for a recent episode of the BBC programme where treasures included wooden figures depicting characters from The Wind in the Willows and a striking vintage diamond necklace. Fine art expert Dendy Easton's guests presented him with a vibrant painting of children enjoying Cornwall they purchased for £225 three decades ago which, to their surprise, was now worth thousands of pounds.
Dendy began: "Now this is a very jolly, happy picture when you look at these children walking down this lane.
"And it can only be by the artist Fred Yates, and I see that's what is signed on the right."
The two guests revealed they purchased the colourful painting at a gallery in Sennen Cove, Cornwall, in 1988, as they thought it looked brilliant.
The expert replied: "Well done you because it's a great picture by him.
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"He's a very interesting artist who was born in 1922, he fought in the Second World War with his twin brother and he moved to Cornwall in the late 60s and became a full-time painter."
Dendy then revealed he had the privilege of meeting the artist in 1975 in Fowey, Cornwall.
He recalled: "I spent a lot of time in Fowey in the 1970s and you'd see him painting on street corners and you could buy his pictures then for around £10, and he sold them to tourists and you'd see them in the shops.
"And then in the meantime, he'd subsidised his income by doing gardening. He was a very nice gentleman."
After analysing the painting further, the expert told his guests: "It's a fantastic painting and a very big one by him.
"I noticed it has a title on the back saying 'Late Fall of Snow, Cornwall', now I can't really see snow there so I think this is artistic license."
He continued: "So you bought it with your heart? How much did you pay for it?"
The guests revealed they spent £225 on the portrait which one guest said was "quite a lot" of money at the time.
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Dendy then valued the painting and told them: "Well if it came up for auction I think it would make £6,000 to £9,000."
The female guest replied: "Goodness me, oh wow, that's incredible."
However, she looked at her partner and said: "We won't sell it though because we bought it, well, with love didn't we?
"We bought it because we loved it," she told Dendy following the valuation.
Her partner nodded and replied: "We did and we are going to keep it."
Within the rest of the episode, Fuchsia Voremberg was captivated by a collection of mountaineering equipment that belonged to pioneering climber Theodore Howard Somervell.
The expert valued his Mount Everest expedition tools at an eye-watering £70,000.
Antiques Roadshow episodes are available to watch on BBC iPlayer.