No, I don’t know how that joke would end either, but that’s where this story starts. Sort of.

Last week I was the victim of my own success. Obviously, success is a good thing, but almost literally every time I looked at my phone, I had a new Etsy order. That was NINE orders. And ELEVEN items. Luckily I’ve been keeping up with the thrifting so I have something to replace them with, but that made for a very busy few days of washing things, taking pictures, editing pictures, listing items, packaging up items and driving back and forth to the post office.

And then this happened:

I hung them in the office on some existing screws just so they’re not on the floor.

Smaller one.

Bigger one.

That’s a painting. Actually it’s two paintings. Both by a dude named Theodorus Van Oorschot. No, I’d never heard of him either. And when I bought these, I was in a hurry so I didn’t even bother to look him up while standing in the Goodwill. That’s partly because there was a woman, clearly very upset, bawling into her phone in the art section about how she’d just kicked her lying, stealing, cheating boyfriend out of the house and her job search wasn’t going well. But I liked them, I see very little thrift store art that I like and all the writing on the back looked like auction house stuff so for $18 I grabbed the paintings and ran.

The name on the front was not really legible at first, but luckily it’s printed on the back.

I’m also guessing these need cleaning.

When I got home, I actually did what you’re supposed to do and held them up to the light. Why? Well, original oil paintings by real artists (not printers with a touch-up crew masquerading as artists) have varying depths of paint. Some paint is applied with a brush, some with a palette knife, some is glopped on and some is very thin.

See how there are bare spots? Originals. Not prints. There might be some paint loss, but there are definitely spots that have been hit with a palette knife.

Then it was off to Google up info about Van Oorschot. Um…holy moly. You can Google him too if you want. He’s a Dutch Impressionist who lived between 1910 and 1989. He’s listed. Let’s just say that this could get interesting.

I think the next step is taking a little trip to Weschler’s (an auction house in downtown DC) on open evaluation day to have them looked at by a professional. Sound like fun? Who wants to come with me?