GUEST: I acquired this piece for free from an online marketplace.
A gentleman was moving, he could not take it with him.
I saw that he listed it, that it was going to the trash, and I said, "I'll be right there to get it, if you can just hang tight."
And I went and picked it up, and he helped me load it in my car, and she was mine.
Unfortunately, he didn't know a lot.
All he said was that his parents traveled a lot.
I tried to do some personal research, um, as far as deciphering what that meant.
I did get some opinions that it's alluding to some sort of emperor and a season, not necessarily a year.
I also tried to figure out what this was that she was holding, because that's really what drew me to the piece.
And I may not pronounce it right, but I found a ruyi, or ryu... APPRAISER: Ruyi.
GUEST: Ruyi.
APPRAISER: That is a special scepter.
It's called a ruyi scepter.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And it means, basically, "as you wish."
"May your dreams come true."
The painting is kind of a thick watercolor on silk.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And in the inscription there is a name, and that is Tang Yin.
And he was one of the four great painters...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: ...of the Ming dynasty.
Tang Yin lived between 1470 and 1524.
He was a brilliant poet, and he pioneered the use of a special kind of script calligraphy that we would call cursive, which is called running script.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISERS: And he was number one in the civil service government examinations.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: In the entire country of China.
So he was a brilliant, brilliant person.
But he was kind of a bad boy.
(chuckles) He liked to have fun.
Within the inscription, you had noted something about a season.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: So it also talks about something in the summer season.
GUEST: Correct.
APPRAISER: That kind of time.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: It has a date.
GUEST: Oh, it has a date.
APPRAISER: Now, the dates in Chinese, in the Chinese calendar are organized in what are we call cyclical dates.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And it's a 60-year cycle.
But the cyclical date comes to 1871.
That would be from the Qing dynasty.
Based on stylistic evidence, I'm having a hard time with the 1871 date.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: But it says that it was faithfully copied, essentially, from a Tang Yin.
So it's not by Tang Yin.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: But it's a faithful copy.
Stylistically, I would see this more from the 1920s, '30s.
GUEST: Okay.
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So someone looked at a painting...
GUEST: Ah!
APPRAISER: ...from 1871 that, in turn, was looking back to a painting by Tang Yin.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: We... don't have the repertoire of all the Tang Yin paintings here in front of us to go through and see, GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: is there a picture of a beautiful woman...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...seated at a table that was part of his work.
If it no longer exists, then instead of having just a copy of a copy, you have a documentary work that could potentially have a fair amount of value.
GUEST: Nice, aw.
APPRAISER: An insurance value, a replacement value, for this would be, in a reasonably... in the $6,000 range.
GUEST: Really?
(laughing): I don't even know what to say.
Oh, my goodness.
Wow.
That's amazing.
I'm very happy with that.
I mean, I knew she was beautiful.
Whether she has value or not, she has value to me.