by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

“I stole them,” Annie Armour Morgret joked, explaining how two paintings gifted by her great-grandmother to her mother came to be in her possession. For Morgret, an archivist at the University for 28 years, the theft was an act of love. She rescued the paintings from inhospitable display in glaring sunlight on the walls of the house where she grew up. Little did Morgret know the two watercolors had secrets to tell. Secret 1: her great-grandmother purchased the two watercolors at a Chicago auction house in 1879. Secret 2: the unsigned paintings were the work of an artist internationally renowned for his watercolors and oil paintings, Winslow Homer.

Morgret took the paintings home, photocopied them, and stored them in archival boxes. Fond of the paintings, a boy and girl at a well and a boy and girl swinging, she displayed the framed prints on her office walls. Seeing the prints, art history professor Mishoe Brennecke mistook them for originals. “Mishoe commented something to the effect, ‘I didn’t know the University had any Winslow Homer’s,’” Morgret recalled.

Stunned, Morgret and Morgret’s daughter Sarah Campbell, herself an artist, began researching the possibility.

An art appraiser could not draw any conclusions from the photocopies Morgret sent. On a hunch, Morgret applied to have the paintings appraised on Antiques Roadshow. Rejected, Morgret continued to apply for the next 14 years and, along with her daughter, continued researching the paintings’ story.

Among what Morgret and Campbell learned, Morgret’s great grandmother purchased the paintings from a Chicago auction house just down the street from where she lived, and Homer had done a series of watercolors depicting children in outdoor settings.

In April 2024, Antiques Roadshow phoned Morgret. She was being considered for a spot on the show. Campbell began to dig deeper, searching out verification the paintings were not done by someone imitating Homer’s style. Campbell observed a particularly stunning likeness to another Homer watercolor: the stumps in the background of the boy and girl at a well painting appeared to be the same stumps in the background of the Winslow Homer painting, “Boys on a Hillside.”

Morgret’s paintings were selected for the May Antiques Roadshow taping. “We lucked out with one of the best appraisers in the business, Betty Krulik who is very knowledgeable about 19th century American art. One of her last comments when we were being filmed was, ‘He signed these paintings with every stroke of the brush.’”

A curious coincidence reared its head with the paintings’ authenticity confirmed. The Chattanooga Hunter Museum of American Art owned another Winslow Homer painting from the same series, “Girl on a Swing.”

Ultimately Morgret and her three siblings decided to sell the paintings, putting to rest a difficult decision about who would inherit them. But at the Jan. 23 sale at Christie’s Auction House, Morgret struggled with wanting to bid on “Boy and Girl on a Swing.” Although the watercolor with the lower appraisal value, due to fading from exposure to light, “Boy and Girl on a Swing” is Morgret’s personal favorite. “The color of blue in that painting is my favorite color and it just makes me feel good. And kids swinging on a swing is more like play than bringing water up from a well.” The scene contrasts sharply with the anti-slavery theme of some Winslow Homer oil paintings.

With fees, “Boy and Girl on a Swing” sold for $75,600. “Boy and Girl at a Well” sold for $113,400.

Antiques Roadshow will feature Morgret’s two paintings in an upcoming “Best of Antiques Roadshow” special.

For Morgret, the paintings’ story has unpeeled like an onion. Each layer has revealed new secrets and new questions, which may never be answered. What did her great grandmother pay for the two paintings? What attracted her great grandmother to these two paintings which are unique for being the only paintings in the series featuring both a boy and a girl? Why did her great grandmother give the paintings to her mother, which Morgret speculates is the case since she recalls the paintings being on display in her childhood home long before her grandmother died, suggesting her grandmother likely never owned them.

And finally, and most perplexing to Morgret is why no one in her family ever mentioned who painted the watercolors. “My entire female line of my mother’s family is college educated. And you would think they would pass that kind of information down,” she said with a sigh.

“Hopefully they went to someone who will either loan them for exhibits or lots of people will come to their house so they get wider exposure,” Morgret mused, her voice betraying a hope others will have the opportunity to love them, as well.