On September 23 we listed a framed pastel drawing for $531. By the end of the same day it was listed at $11,875. Nothing about the drawing had changed. What changed was that we found its name.
This is how that happened, including the part where our own process got it wrong first.
The first pass
The drawing came in with a batch of art from a private collection: fourteen pieces, photographed together and run through our software the same afternoon. For each one it reads the photographs, identifies what it can, pulls comparable sales, and proposes a price range.
On this one it had very little to go on. A peach and ochre pastel ground, figures and bison drawn in outline, a segmented rainbow arc, a striped cone. And a pencil signature in the lower right that, in the photographs, did not read as any name it could match.
So it did what it should with an unreadable signature: it treated the drawing as unattributed, priced it as a good decorative pastel at $250 to $600, and it went live at $531. That is a defensible price for an unsigned drawing. It was the wrong price for this one.
What caught it
The collection came with paperwork. In 1999 the whole collection was catalogued by a professional appraiser, item by item, with photographs. Looking at the new listing, I recognised the drawing from that appraisal.
Item 16 in the 1999 report is "Drawing with Figures and Petroglyphs" by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, circa 1980, pastel, 30 by 22 1/2 inches. The appraisal's photograph shows this exact sheet. And once you know what the signature says, it reads plainly: "JQS Smith".
The name was not found by the software. It was found in a folder of paper. But that is also the lesson: the software is only as good as what it is given, and the most valuable thing a family can hand over with a collection is its records.
Who she is
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (1940 to 2025) was a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation and one of the most important American artists of her generation.
- In 2020 the National Gallery of Art acquired her painting I See Red: Target. It was the first painting by a Native American artist to enter the museum's collection since it was founded in 1937.
- In 2023 the Whitney Museum of American Art gave her Memory Map, the largest showing of her career and the first retrospective the Whitney had organised for a Native American artist.
- The same year she became the first artist to curate an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.
She died in January 2025. The figures, animals and rock-art imagery in this drawing are the petroglyph work she was making around 1980.
What the name is worth
With a name, the research was a different job. We went looking for her works on paper from the same period and the same size, and found two strong comparables:
- Camas #41M, 1980, a pastel of the same size, sold at Bonhams in August 2022 for $7,013.
- 25M El Morro, circa 1980, sold at Rago in July 2025 for $10,795, against an estimate of $12,000 to $18,000.
That gives a range of about $7,000 to $12,000 for a comparable sheet, and the listing now sits at $11,875. The 1999 appraisal's own figure never came into it. That was an insurance replacement value from 27 years ago, which is a different number for a different purpose, and we do not quote it to buyers.
What we changed
Every piece of art that comes in is now checked against any appraisal or inventory the family has before it is priced, not after. When there are old records, the check happens first. It takes minutes, and in this case it was worth more than eleven thousand dollars.
If you are clearing a house, keep the folders. Old appraisals, gallery receipts, the note on the back of a frame. They are often worth more than the frames.
The drawing is for sale here. Clearing a collection of your own? Book a free walkthrough.