Let me start my story with an explanation of where I was: exploring Ellenville, NY, at the recommendation of a friend who moved to nearby Wurtsboro and was giving me suggestions on interesting Catskills-area towns. I was walking around New York State Route 52 in the middle of town (as seen below), and was checking out the various storefronts. One particular storefront, I don’t remember what the name of it was, or if it even had an official name, but it was filled with antiques (and a fair amount of junk). It wasn’t your typical antique store, as it was dusty and unorganized and nothing had prices listed. It was being overseen by an older man sitting in the corner smoking cigarettes, and despite the smell, I decided to look around.
I saw a few interesting things, but the one that caught my attention was a small, framed embroidered image of an old man with a funny hat, smoking a pipe that looked more like a mini golf club than it did a pipe. I liked the quirkiness of it, and when I asked the old man for the price, the sound of “$15 dollars” was my cue to take this piece home.
My first thought was – is this old man with a pipe based on a famous painting? I did an image search, and it appears instead to be a somewhat popular embroidery pattern or mass-produced kit, as I found several other “Bavarian Man with Pipe” images, although as you can see below, they’re not identical, but very similar.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t thinking I had anything valuable, I just had curiosity about the source of this image. I’ve seen numerous embroidery art pieces in antique stores over the years, and have always wanted one, and this guy at $15 was my entry into the collecting of embroidery.
But there’s a little more to the story. When I got home and took a closer look, I notice the back had stamps and notations: across the top in penciled handwriting, “Return of Persephone,” and below a stamp that says “The Return of Persephone from painting by Sir Fred’k Leighton, Colored No. 3913, Carbon No. 4393,” which is crossed out and listed as “7937,” and finally “published by Campbell Art Company, New York.” At first I figured this was just the backing of a previously framed piece that was replaced when someone wanted to frame our Bavarian pipe smoker, but when I opened it up in order to clean the glass inside, I noticed that the notated backing was the same paper as the Campbell Art Company published print, which you can see at the top of the page. As a reference point, I have another reproduction below right of “The Return of Persephone,” 1891, which is a large painting (approximately 80 x 60 inch oil on canvas) by Frederic Leighton (1830-1896). The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a study for this painting in their permanent collection, which you can see here. From what I gather online, the original canvas is at the Leeds Gallery of Art, but I can’t find anything about it on their website.
Being the curious guy that I am, I also wanted to learn about the Campbell Art Company. When it has all the various notations that it has, it has me assuming it’s more than just a “poster,” but rather a higher level art reproduction. A search for this company reveals that Alfred S. Campbell (1840-1912) was a photographer and business owner who produced a wide array of art prints between 1870 and 1910. Pieces produced by this company have a current retail from $150 to $250 pending condition and demand, according to one antiques expert. It’s obvious from the ripped-up state of my print as seen at the top of the page, this print probably has no value, but to think that it’s over 110 years old is quite surprising to me.
At any rate, I’ve got the Persephone print removed and saved separately, and my bearded Bavarian man cleaned up and re-framed and hanging on my wall. $15 was well spent, both for the addition of art to my collection but also for the rabbit hole it led me down to learn all these new things.