Art Identification - Otto Wilhelm Eduard Erdmann

Jamie....we often repeat that this is just an art forum where like people make contact and talk about picture making. It is not an art dealership or auction house. I gather that “ noob “ is an American moniker? . This is a U K based site. If you lived here I would suggest you Google what info you can from the pic, and go to an art auction house. Maybe that could also apply the n the U S . It’s very flattering that people think we are all experts. , but most of us are not. Happy hunting with your painting.

At last! A signature that can be read! Half the time, artists' signatures seem designed to be illegible. Having said which, Erdmann painted a lot of pictures like this, which have been in and out of fashion during his lifetime and after his death. There's a brief Wikipedia entry about him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Erdmann) which you're probably found already. I have a question, though - are you sure this is a painting? I have no reason to suppose it isn't, other than the brown tone of it, as though it's a print that has faded. Your second picture DOES look like an oil painting - but most of Erdmann's works were painted in a full colour palette: he may well have painted this in sepia tones for reproduction in the magazine, referenced in the Wikipedia article, though. You're probably miles away from me, but if only could see the physical object, I might be able to tell you. On value, though ..... eek. Sylvia is right - we may have come across individual artists, but it would be a matter of pure luck if we knew what their work fetched at auction. See if you can find him on auction house sites - if there's one near you, call in and get a valuation, bearing in mind that really, you need several before coming to any conclusion - and even then, it all depends on who's at the sale on the day. Erdmann is a known artist, though, so there'll be some value provided it is an oil painting.

Prices for Erdmanns seem to be ranging from around 400 to 1,000 Euros, from a look I took at a few auction sites - most don't give a final price, but some do. This isn't really an awful lot, not that I'd sneeze at it - if the picture you showed is an oil painting, I would imagine, given it's far from being his most elaborate picture, that you'd be looking at the very low end of that spectrum.

If you're still around by the way, take a look at the reverse of the picture, and better still post a photo - is it sealed in, or can you see if it's actually on a canvas? If so, is that paint on the canvas, or printer's ink on cloth? Is that a sheet of glass over it? That would be fairly unusual, though not unheard of, for a painting. Sorry for all the questions, but it's very difficult to have any certainty about a picture from a straight-on photograph of it. A good framer could make good the damage to the frame, by the way, which would be worth doing if it's a real painting, and quite possibly worth doing anyway ... some prints being better than others, they're also a little more valuable than others.