Philip Mould talks to Benji Wilson about the high-stakes world of art attribution ahead of the return of Fake or Fortune? on BBC One.

A small portrait believed to have been painted by a pupil of Van Dyck has been confirmed as the work of the great master himself.

The story of how the masterpiece, which languished in a storeroom at the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, County Durham, will be told on the BBC2 Culture Show at 6.30 pm tonight.

It is one of 210,000 artworks which have been photographed and put online as part of the Public Catalogue.

The 72.4 x 61 cm oval oil painting aroused the interest of Bendor Grosvenor who suspected there could be more to the picture than first thought.

What followed was a prolonged exercise in detective work in which the painting was taken on an Odyssey by Alastair Sooke, the presenter andTelegraph art critic.

First the paint itself was analysed to establish the work was created in the 1630s.

At the same time the archive at the National Gallery was used to verify the sitter was Olivia Boteler Porter, a lady in waiting to Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles 1.

Then the thick layer of varnish and grime was removed which enabled the picture to verified as a Van Dyck Christopher Brown, Director of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology.

“To find a portrait by Van Dyck is rare enough, but to find one of his 'friendship' portraits like this, of the wife of his best friend in England, is extraordinarily lucky,” Dr Grosvenor said.

“Although as part of our national heritage values are irrelevant, for insurance purposes it should now be valued at anything up to £1 million.

“Had it appeared at auction as a copy, and in its dirty state, it would probably only have been estimated at about £3-5,000.”

Van Dyck or Van Dupe?

Philip Mould talks to Benji Wilson about the high-stakes world of art attribution ahead of the return of Fake or Fortune? on BBC One.

Philip Mould doesn’t really want to talk about the Van Dyck. This is unusual for Mould, who, as viewers of Antiques Roadshow and now Fake or Fortune? will know, likes nothing more than arty confabulations. But the Van Dyck is personal: the art dealer bought the picture himself, and he was the one who suspected it was a painted-over Van Dyck. It may well not be. And if it isn’t – we’ll find out in Fake or Fortune episode three – then Mould will end up with egg on his Van Dyck, so to speak.

The teasing question mark hanging over the potential masterpiece is what Fake or Fortune? is all about. Take a picture, hand it to Mould and presenter Fiona Bruce, subject it to some sleuthing and try to discover whether, beneath layers of crusted paint and years of dubious provenance, it is in fact a great work of art. What makes anyone care, of course, is that the stakes are high. In Mould’s case, if the Van Dyck turns out to be a Van Dupe, then he will have lost thousands of pounds, as well as a sizeable chunk of his reputation, all on camera.

As that suggests, art attribution is a high-wire act. Mould and Bruce’s enquiries on Fake or Fortune?can make a lot of people look like mugs. Not everyone in the art world is a fan.

“The art world reaction has been mixed,” says Mould, sitting in the back office of his Mayfair gallery, old masters staring down from every wall. “What we have done is point out the vulnerabilities within the attribution process. Now just think about that: if people own pictures upon which they have made big decisions in their lives because of their value, and that value is questioned, that can have a seismic effect. We have had criticism. And anger. People have said the art world has enough problems without you adding to them.”

Mould is used to this sort of condemnation. He sees himself as outside “the cosy club of art dealers”. In 2011 he was subjected to a spate of poison pen attacks questioning his talent, his reputation and his finances. They turned out to be from a rival art dealer, Mark Weiss.

“He was thrown out of the Society of London Art Dealers. But it was for a time extremely unpleasant. He’s a second-generation main dealer in English portraits and we sort of overtook him. I imagine he was really ------ off. [My] being high profile as well, doing the books, the TV… you don’t necessarily make friends doing that.”

Mould counters accusations that he is a Fifth Columnist by saying that shining a light on the workings of the art world is actually doing the art world a favour. In the first programme of the first series a once-questioned Monet was proved, beyond what most experts thought was reasonable doubt, to have been genuine. Yet the Wildenstein Institute in France, generally considered to be the presiding authority on Monet attributions, insisted it was a fake.

Mould says that one series of Fake or Fortune? on, the penny appears to have dropped and the programme’s process of attribution is now taken seriously by the academic authorities – as certain events in the second series prove.

“We’ve had some dramatic successes,” he says. What has happened is that the programme has developed a power of its own. It is a transparent and more democratic way of executing a process which up until now has been rather opaque.”

That process includes detailed forensic analysis – “the CSI bit”, as Mould calls it. Dendrochronology (dating of the wooden panels beneath the paint by tree-ring analysis), as well as spectrometry (analysing the paint itself to establish age) are both central to the attribution process. The results can be wondrous, Mould says, but they will never be infallible.

“You can home in far closer on a date, but can you 100 per cent conclusively say something’s right or wrong? No. Because a faker could do all the research you’ve done and give the impression of age and time.”

Fakery, he says, is on the increase. The internet is both a help and a hindrance – there are more discoveries than ever thanks to the web, but detailed digital imagery makes forgery easier, and internet auction sites provide a simple, semi-anonymous outlet.

“It’s almost impossible to recreate the strokes of a genius technician of the 17th century. But fakery in 20th century paintings, particularly British paintings, I see all the time. Think how easy it is to do Lowry. I could do you a Lowry now. I’ve seen fake Francis Bacons with old labels on the back. I see them all over the place.”

Mould, who says that he “loathes” forgers (“I think they’re just shabby crooks”) says he knows who the master fakers are in his own area of British portraiture. “One day I want to take them on. In a future series I’d love to expose one or two of them.”

The problem is he has to be absolutely sure he’s right.

“There’s nothing more embarrassing [than] to set out on a task only to ------ up by the end.”

Mould is renowned for the ones he’s got right – the only extant portrait of Henry VIII’s elder brother Prince Arthur, which paid for Mould’s Kensington town house; a recent coup that he says could “take care of my old age” – currently waiting for official attribution; the earliest formal portrait of a transvestite which he discovered last year and sold to the National Portrait Gallery; and the Van Dyck of a lost child that now hangs at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

“We buy three paintings a week from screen [over the internet]. It’s a bit like tasting food with a cold. It’s part of the risk. I do make mistakes.”

Which brings us back to the Van Dyck.Fake or fortune, Philip? He laughs the say-nothing laugh of a man who has become very good at keeping secrets, and offers me another cup of tea.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 984