Treasures in your attic: Watercolors certainly treasures, not trash

Q. While cleaning out my closet recently, I came across two watercolor paintings that I had purchased many years ago. They are by Ranulph Debayeux Bye, and both measure 9½ inches high by 12 inches wide. I can find information about Bye, but not about the value of these paintings, and I would like to know if they are trash or treasure.

A. We vote for treasure. These are a wonderful pair of views of old railroad stations, by an American artist whose work is very highly regarded by many.

We gather that you know all the biographical information that follows because you have done the research about Bye’s life — but for those unfamiliar with him who are reading this, let’s review.

Bye was born in Princeton, N.J., in 1916. He studied art at what is now known as the Philadelphia College of Art. But at the time Bye studied there it was called the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art.

Bye also studied at the Art Students League in New York City. Later, he taught art for more than 30 years at the Moore College of Art and Design, which was established by Sarah Worthington Peter in 1848 as the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

Bye was very successful both as a teacher and an artist, and it has been estimated that, since 1953, he painted more than 3,000 images. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, the American Watercolor Society, and Allied Arts — and all of these institutions exhibited his work at one time or another. Today, Bye’s watercolors are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Boston Museum of Fine Art and many other smaller, less-well-known repositories of fine art.

When it comes to what Bye painted, he was enamored of nearby Bucks County, Pa. It was named by William Penn for his home region in England — Buckinghamshire, a name often just shortened to “Bucks” by the English. But Bye also painted landscapes of California, Maine, New York, Georgia, New Jersey and, overseas, Italy.

Bye is associated with painting farm and other pastoral scenes, plus paintings of houses, barns, fire stations and, yes, railroad stations. He published several books, including “Painting Buildings in Watercolor,” “Ranulph Bye’s Bucks County” and “Ranulph Bye’s Collection of Old Firehouses.”

We were able to identify one railroad station that is the subject of one of your paintings. It is the Hopewell Railroad Station in Hopewell, N.J. It was built by the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad in 1876 and leased to the Philadelphia Reading Railroad in 1879. Train service there ended in 1983.

We found a much larger version of this painting (14 by 21 inches) that sold at auction in 2004 for $1,800 — but the rendering in your possession would sell for much less because of its rather diminutive size. As a pair, we feel these two paintings would sell at auction for between $1,000 and $1,200 and have an insurance value of around double that.

Ÿ Contact Helaine Fendelman and Joe Rosson at Treasures in Your Attic, P.O. Box 18350, Knoxville, TN 37928.