The other day I almost bought a neon sign to hang in our living room. When I say I “almost bought” one, I mean I bid $275 on a sign that eventually went for $4,000. I wasn’t even close.
Even so, I’d already planned where I was going to put it and how I was going to hang it. It was a really cool sign, about 3 feet tall by 2 feet wide. Its fretwork of thin glass tubes was bent and shaped to resemble an old-fashioned bellows camera. I guess it was once hanging outside a camera shop back in the Speed Graphic era.
It’s just as well I didn’t get the sign. It probably would have made our living room throb like Kramer’s apartment in that Kenny Rogers Roasters episode of “Seinfeld.” And even as I was clicking “Send” on my paltry bid, I knew what my kids would say if I did happen to win: Great. One more thing for us to get rid of.
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My Lovely Wife and I hear that a lot these days. You may, too. To the younger generation, it’s bad enough inheriting melting ice caps, rising oceans and flaming rainforests. Do they have to be saddled with our stuff, too?
Stuff is one thing they can do without, especially our old stuff. A while back, I wrote about the challenge of figuring out what to do with old military uniforms. That put Jamie Gold, an editor and writer who lives in Old Town Alexandria, in mind of something else: old portraits.
Jamie has somehow wound up with eight family oil paintings dating from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. She knows the identities of only half the people, including her grandmother (born in 1898) and her great-grandmother (born in the 1870s). The rest are more distant relations — identities unknown.
“My family was not wealthy, so maybe these were the equivalent of Instagram in years past,” Jamie said, adding: “I do not know what the heck my mother’s family had by way of houses. They must have been big. They didn’t throw anything out.”
Jamie has to be more discerning, especially as she and her husband are moving to a smaller house.
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“The paintings and frames are lovely,” she said. “And some are quite large. Even if they were small, though, neither my siblings nor I have space or inclination to have them all hanging in our homes.”
Jamie wondered whether she should donate the paintings to a thrift shop. Her husband thought an art school might want them, if only to reuse the canvas.
“That would seem more respectful than just tossing the paintings,” Jamie said. She added: “We can’t be the only ones dealing with this.”
Stephanie Kenyon of the Chevy Chase auction house Sloans & Kenyon told me that portrait paintings like Jamie’s are common in her business.
“We do come across them all the time: portraits where often the subject is not known, the artist cannot be identified and the work is not even signed,” Stephanie said.
Demand for these is low, she said, because “portraits are not so much in favor among the millennials.” Antique or old-fashioned decor is just not in style right now.
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Even so, “If they have any aesthetic merit at all, they’ll sell for $200 or $300,” Stephanie said. If the subject is especially beautiful or handsome and the frame is especially nice, they might fetch more.
Stephanie suggested that people approach their local historical society to see whether they have any interest in adding the portrait to their collection. Of course, that requires knowing who is in the painting.
“Anything is better than destroying these pieces,” said Stephanie, who likens auctions to “high-end recycling.”
Said Stephanie: “We find in advertising our sales that sometimes people of that same name — or with some family association to the original owner — will come out of the woodwork and bid on them.”
Jamie said she was “shocked” an auction house would have any interest in random portrait paintings.
“I would love to know who buys them and why,” she said. “Would someone actually hang up a picture of a stranger, even if it is from the Gilded Age?”
How about you? Have old family portraits piled up at your place? What did you do with them? Or have you been on the other end, buying paintings of strangers? Send the details — with “Portrait” in the subject line — to me at john.kelly@washpost.com.
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