GUEST: It's been in the family a number of years, maybe five, ten.

It came through my uncle who received it as a gift from a friend after he passed away, who received it from then the... ...daughter of the painter, who is Grace Hall Hemingway.

APPRAISER: It's an original oil on canvas.

So as you point out, the artist is somebody from a pretty famous family.

GUEST: Yes, this is Ernest Hemingway's mother, who's from the local area here in Charlevoix.

They have a place, had a place here in Walloon Lake.

APPRAISER: So from where we stand today, we're about 15 miles from Walloon Lake, Michigan.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: Where the Hemingways had their summer home and where young Ernest would go for the summers.

So the painting is clearly signed in the bottom left, "Hall Hemingway."

And Hall was Grace's maiden name.

She was born in 1872.

She lived till 1951.

I think it was probably executed around 1930.

A couple years earlier, some major events went on.

Her husband took his life.

Also in 1928, Grace, who had all of two years' training at the Art Institute of Chicago, traveled to the Southwest and began painting the local vista.

That same year, she had an exhibition at the Hemingway home.

There were 42 paintings.

Doing a little checking, this does not appear to have been one of them.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: But I think it's fair to say this would have been executed just a bit thereafter.

But Grace felt that, as a female artist, she had a hard go of things if she put the name Grace in the signature.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So on the label on the back, which in my opinion, is in the artist's own handwriting, we have the title Sage Brush' by Hall Hemingway.

"Studio," with the address and the price, $500.

She's really captured the Southwest here.

And I think it's, I think it's a wonderful example of her work.

But I think we have to pay, really, attention to the fact that this is a Hemingway.

Right.

And on the one hand, her son, arguably one of the top American 20th century authors, if not figures.

And on the other hand, she wanted to not play that up too much, I think, and I think wanted to particularly not play up the fact that she was a female artist.

I think we have to play that up a little bit because I think there's a little bit of a celebrity factor here.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: Fewer than five paintings have really come up to auction.

I think, at auction today, although her paintings don't bring a tremendous amount of money, I do think this is one that could be comfortably priced at $4,000 to $6,000.

GUEST: Okay.

Wow.