GUEST 1: This is a painting that I found at a flea market in Wilmington, Vermont.

What caught my attention was that I saw the, the yellow, uh, painting where... APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST 1: ...the, the light was coming through, and I was very struck by the beauty of the painting.

APPRAISER: Right, so you bought it just 'cause you liked it, do you have any idea who it might be by or anything?

GUEST 1: Well, I was looking through a magazine£ APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST 1: ...and something caught my eye.

A signature in another painting£ APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST 1: and I called and I found out who that artist was.

APPRAISER: Uh-huh.

GUEST 1: Once I found out who the artist was, then I began researching who the painting might be.

APPRAISER: And who do you think that-that artist might be?

GUEST 1: Uh, Paul Gauguin.

APPRAISER: Uh-huh, okay, a famous, uh, 19th century French painter, yeah.

GUEST 1: Yes.

APPRAISER: Talking the signature, that's a little bit of a stretch.

First of all, because it starts with a "C" rather than a "P..." GUEST 1: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...and we can see that right there.

And also, um, and there is a "G," which is similar to his work.

But the rest of it is not completely, uh, convincing that it is by Gauguin.

But the most overwhelming piece of evidence is really the materials it's made out of.

GUEST 1: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Gauguin was known to use very rough canvas.

It looks almost like burlap.

Um, this canvas is actually much newer than-than he could even paint it on-- this was probably, um, manufactured no earlier than maybe 1920.

The weave of the canvas is too fine.

You can see that down here.

And the type of stretchers that are o-- it's on are much newer than, um, he could have painted on.

He died in 1903.

GUEST 1: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: This is in inches-- exactly nine by 12 inches, indicates that it's of English or American origin£ GUEST 1: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...which pretty much negates, um, it being French, which would have been a metric, um, measurement.

So I think what you have is something done by, um, an Englishman or American, um, in the south of France, uh, sometime in the early part of the century.

There is a similarity in the signature£ GUEST 1: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...but I think, unfortunately, it's not a, uh, a Gauguin.

GUEST: Well, we know that people, uh, they do copy other people's signatures and that kind of stuff.

So we knew that that was a possibility, um.

APPRAISER: Yeah.

Yeah.

Given the fact it's an atypical subject matter, the-the signature's not quite right, and these, the-the-the materials aren't there.

I think it doesn't have that much of a chance, unfortunately.

GUEST 1: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: I wish it-- or it were, for you, but it's not.

GUEST 2: Well, at least now we know.

APPRAISER: Yeah, actually, something like this probably would be worth maybe $100 to $200.