NORWAY – The burnt-umber poppies in a round wicker basket look as if they might have been painted at dusk, in the lowering light of a desert sun.

During her childhood, Tabitha Smith of Paris recalls looking at the oil still life hanging above her grandmother’s television at her Oxford home. When her grandmother asked her one day what she would like to inherit, Smith asked for the painting, which has an 1889 date on it.

“It’s something she always had,” Smith said.

Smith kept the painting for eight years without thinking too much of it. But while she and her sister were messing around on the computer recently, they decided on a whim to do an online search for Ellen B. Farr, the signature on the painting.

After finding Web sites on Farr, Smith and her sister dialed an art dealer in California, and within minutes Smith said she was offered $3,000, a value that surprised her. An appraiser in Kennebunk, Richard Oliver, said based on other sales of Farr’s work he figured $4,000 was the highest price Smith’s painting could catch.

But the painting “Basket and Poppies” is not for sale. “It’s part of my grandmother,” Smith said.

Instead, Smith and Michael Santos, the owners of Michael’s Dining and Lounge in Norway, have put up the picture in their restaurant for patrons to check out.

“I think it is worth something, or worth something to look at,” Santos said.

According to Judith Vance, an art appraiser in New Hampshire, Farr is probably most likely coveted by collectors in California who seek 19th century paintings in their area. Many artists moved across the country to California at that time for the state’s wildness, beauty, light and climate.

Farr was born in New Hampshire in 1840 and moved west in 1887. She painted still life, portraits and the missions in southern California, according to a Web site called AskART.com, a resource for art dealers and appraisers. She died in 1907.

The highest price for any of her works was $15,000 in 2003 for an oil painting of a “Blossoming Pepper Tree,” which depicts leafy tree branches laden with dangling red peppers.

In December, a 20- by 40-inch painting of hers sold for $5,700 at a Bonhams & Butterfields auction in California, according to AskART.com. The majority of Farr paintings sell for under $5,000. “Basket and Poppies” is a little larger than 16 by 12 inches.

While Vance said she wasn’t too impressed with Farr, she recognized that some would find the paintings desirable. “Nineteenth century American painting is pretty hot and has appreciated a whole lot.”

According to Smith, the painting may have been bought by Hazel and Bruce Hosmer of Oxford. Bruce was the son of H.H. Hosmer, the famous snowshoe maker in this area. The couple traveled to California in the 1940s and liked to collect antiques, Smith said

After Hazel died, the painting passed onto her sister Isabel Jackson of Coldwater Brook Road, Smith’s grandmother.