Horne recalls gift from artist

Published 2:38 pm Friday, February 24, 2023

MOULTRIE, Ga. — Hanging on the wall of Patricia Horne’s living room in Moultrie is a painting of a tree.

To the untrained eye, it’s a nice picture, nothing more. The Treaty Oak, a Jacksonville, Fla., landmark, brushes the ground with its huge boughs.

The artist has signed it in the lower right corner: Dean Fausett.

Fausett is among the notable American painters of the 20th century.

Horne has two of his paintings, gifts from the artist himself. In addition to the Treaty Oak, she has one depicting the birth of Jesus.

“He gave them to me,” she said. “I didn’t buy them. He told me when he gave them to me that one day they’d be worth a lot of money.”

Horne said her husband turned down $30,000 for the Treaty Oak painting, but when she tried to sell the paintings about 10 years ago, she didn’t get any response.

Horne’s first husband, James, was key to her receiving the paintings. He worked for a tree company many years ago, she said, and his job was to go around the country collecting seeds from historic trees. Sometimes she’d go with him.

James was getting seeds from a battlefield near Fausett’s home, Horne said, and they visited with the artist while was working on the Treaty Oak painting. James was interested in it, and while he talked with Fausett about acquiring it, she looked at a stack of paintings that he had already finished.

“I went through that and I saw the painting of the trilogy of Jesus’s birth,” she recalled. “I asked Mr. Fausett how much it was. James said you don’t ask questions like that.”

When the tree painting was finished, Fausett mailed it to James. Included in the package was the trilogy Horne had been so interested in.

Horne didn’t say how long ago she received the paintings. Fausett died in December 1998.