FAKE OR FORTUNE 9X01: HENRY MOORE

at 42 million the art world where paintings change hands for fortunes so thank you very much but for every known masterpiece there may be another still waiting to be discovered this is it international art dealer philip mold and i have teamed up to hunt for lost works by great artists we use old-fashioned detective work and state-of-the-art science to get to the truth science can enable us to see beyond the human eye oh my goodness every case is packed with surprise and intrigue is it or isn't it freud then but not every painting is quite what it seems gosh why didn't i notice that before it's a journey that can end in joy there is enough to support the conclusion that it is by tom roberts or bitter disappointment i don't think it's a work by gogan i'm very sorry this time could a work discovered buried in the brambles of a norfolk back garden be by celebrated sculptor henry moore if it is it could be worth a fortune my god there's a lot of state with this one isn't it our investigation takes us on the trail of henry moore through norfolk to his home in perry green to discover how he created his masterpieces could it be the starting point yeah that then becomes yours what thought but there's a forgotten artist in the frame the first thing i've got to ask you do you recognize it's one of your mother's works will science help us solve the mystery well well well this is a surprise it's now i think more important than ever to work out what it's made from we're on the road heading east to the beautiful county of norfolk a place of inspiration for so many artists this week's case brings us to the medieval city of norwich we've come to meet a couple who'd like our help to investigate a mysterious work of art hello nice to meet you hey nice to see you should we have a look at your sculpture neil and barbara betts have invited us to see a curious sculpture they've owned for over 20 years they hope it might be an undiscovered masterpiece this is henry henry and why is he called henry well we have a a very dear art historian friend and she remarked that he was very much like a henry moore sculpture so from then he became henry gosh well wouldn't it be wonderful to add more to the name henry because henry moore is one of the leading sculptors of the 20th century influential much collected and you have an intriguing looking object here that has some of the characteristics of this great man [Music] henry moore is one of the biggest names in the history of art born in 1898 he was the son of a yorkshire miner who rose to international fame to become one of the most celebrated sculptors of the 20th century he was inspired by the way natural and organic objects could be transformed into art his monumental bronzes can be seen all over the world and his works can sell for millions could this piece actually be by the great man its story begins in 1987 when neil and barbara's former neighbours asked for help to clear their garden at a place called murgate hall i went there with the streamer and i kept catching certain items and then eventually i came across this well you just hit him with a streamer yeah hit him with a streamer and so um we got the wheelbarrow out put him in and took him to the house and that's where he stayed as a door stop for years as a door stall as a door stop henry stayed at murgate hall until their neighbor mr williams passed away mrs williams moved to a nearby barn conversion and neil and barbara cared for her until her death in 2000. they had no idea what was in store for them i got a phone call from the executives and said um mrs williams has left you the bomb and everything in it so she left you her entire home and contents yeah wow but it speaks volumes about what your relationship with her was i mean that's so touching that she obviously felt yes did she feel you you were like family to her well she actually told the um staff of the nurses and everything that i was her son that she never had oh that's lovely it was a big shock as you could imagine um so that was how henry came to us henry was there so henry came to live with you and then what did you do with him well we had a water feature in the garden so i decided to put a pipe up his back to the top of his head and water would flow over it and he was there in the garden for quite some time and i did actually look into melting him down as well shame on you it's all coming out now i'm sorry to say that but i did oh my god i weighed him and worked how much he might be worth i think it was 50 50 pounds yeah well i hope you ruined the day that you considered melting this dog because i reckon that is a first isn't it we're off to a promising start because henry has already caught the interest of the henry moore foundation we sent all the photographs and any data that i got on it sent them through to that and they came straight back to us and said um it's very very interesting and would you like to put it to the panel that's a very significant step forward because the henry moore foundation get hundreds of inquiries every year from people hoping they might have a genuine henry moore only about 30 or 40 get put through to the review panel and that is the panel that decides whether or not it is a genuine henry moore or not in the eyes of the art world they have the roman emperor's power to say yes yes and so what you want us to do now then is make the strongest possible case exactly for the henry moore foundation then to consider yes well if we can prove that this is a one-off not not one of a series but a unique object by a much loved highly regarded sculpture of the 20th century we could be talking in excess of half a million pounds who knows could even be a million pounds wow up to a million that's extraordinary absolutely shock this is henry the door stop the water feature you know but as always there's a flip side to this so if it's not accepted as a henry moore well it might only be worth a couple of thousand pounds we say on fake or fortune so often there's a lot at stake but my god there's a lot of state with this one isn't there the difference between it being accepted as henry moore or not is just massive and it's also quite awe-inspiring to think that he could have been made by him i think that's the bit that i find quite intriguing is that he could have actually done that well whether it is by henry moore or not either way it's a lot more than 50 quid if you've melted it down it's not my finest moment [Music] the first stage of our investigation is to examine the physical evidence i'm taking a closer look at the sculpture on first setting eyes on this the feeling i get is a presence a feeling of power in a way of going back to the dawn of time you know this is part bone it's part fossil it's trying to express something frightening perhaps and then when you begin to break it down into its component parts you can see elements that you associate with henry moore this great solid bone-like structure here slightly angled at the top and then beneath that sharp expressive tooth i've seen something similar to that before and then a very moorish touch what looks like a hip bone this rather gentle rather beautiful hollow there are elements which although i haven't seen them put together in this way are reminiscent of henry moore one thing i find curious is its color now when i think of henry moore it's bronze it's that sort of browny yellowy hue and this is silvery it's not the color i associate with him that needs to be explained i have to say that it's really impressive i find myself rather blown away by it [Music] i'm keen to know what neil and barbara have managed to discover so far so you found henry with your strimmer yes in the grass at murgate hall and have you managed to do any research into how it might have got there um yes i knew that the um the lady who owned the property before was a lady called betty juicin she was an artist and she had lots of famous artist friends and what kind of artist friends we did a bit of research and we actually found an article which is on there on the local history website all right so she was an accomplished artist especially in sculpture and painting and a member of the women's international art club henry moore was one famous name who visited the hall on a number of occasions he already had connections to the area as he often visited his sister who lived in mulbarton in the 1920s gosh what did you think when you saw that um shock again i think really because it was the first real connection that we had and so it was great optimism i think when we saw that one thing that slightly rings along the bells is it says she betty juicing was an accomplished artist especially in sculpture exactly a painting exactly so yeah that's got to raise a possibility possibility that it's it's a sculpture by betty jewson not by henry moore at all yes exactly that wouldn't be quite so no good would it i mean if it turns out that he's a henry moore how will you feel about him i can't even think like that no i can't think about that it's just too big a thing to take yeah well we'll see what we can find out thank you thank you can't wait i've come to perry green in hertfordshire on the trail of henry moore this is where the artist lived and worked from 1940 until his death in 1986. today it's home to the henry moore foundation which safeguards his legacy the network of studios where his greatest masterpieces were conceived have been carefully preserved and in the gardens moore's monumental bronzes are displayed in nature as he intended there's no better place to gain an understanding of the great sculptor to steal a glimpse into the creative workings of his mind surrounded by moore's strange organic shapes and abstract forms i want to see how neil and barbara's piece compares to these genuine works and there's one colossal sculpture that i find particularly compelling [Music] i always think the key to understanding henry moore is to realize that his particular artistic truth was all to do with the core of things the raw the elemental you know getting down to the meaning of life as he saw it and this is a brilliant example of that it's called three-piece vertebrae and at first glance these are the crucial bones to an animal or a human and yet the more you look at them so they seem to change i mean yes they are bones but also they feel like stone is it reaching far back into some sort of neolithic imagery or symbolism so the question is do we see in this epic piece here any echoes any resonances in neil and barbara's piece but i suppose the most obvious thing to point out is that central sort of spur-shaped nub in the middle which in neil and barbara sculpture it's a little bit more nose-shaped but you you can see they're related in some way and then they're these thrusting upward points almost like embryonic teeth well we've seen something very similar in neil and barbara's piece and taking it as a whole the sort of turning undulating nature and feel of bone we see something very similar in nil and barbara's sculpture just in visual and aesthetic terms there's enough similarities going on for me to want to know more i'm heading out of norwich on the trail of this intriguing sculpture if it is by henry moore how did it end up in the norfolk countryside to find out i've come to the place where it was discovered a fine medieval manor house mergate hall this is where the artist betty dewson lived from the 1930s until her death in 1981 according to local history henry moore visited on several occasions elena chubb now lives at murgate hall she's agreed to help me find where the sculpture was discovered hi there hi nice to meet you nice to meet you too what a beautiful place thank you absolutely lovely now i've got a map here okay that neil has given me x marks the spot and it's i think it leads over there yes shall we try and yeah of course can you guide me to it yes absolutely right after the juice and family left murgate hall neil and barbara welcomed their new neighbors mr and mrs williams it was in 1987 that neil helped them clear the garden and discovered the sculpture so we're looking in this undergrowth and this clearing just here yes so this is where neil hit the statue they hope is by henry moore with his strimmer all those years ago indeed it does make sense that work was found here betty juice and had a lot of artists friends that visited here makes sense there was work by artist that she would have met as well as her own work found in the garden and there's a story that henry moore visited here as well do you know anything more about that it's not beyond the realms of possibility they came from the same timeline they both did sculpture worked with abstract forms so yes i think there's a good chance they would have known each other it's a very intriguing possibility since eleanor and her family moved to murgate hall 20 years ago they found other sculptures in the grounds works which they think are by betty dewson so these are some of the pieces that have been found in the garden over the years and these are betty's works are they better juices we believe so so looking at these i can see kind of some similarities with barbara neal's piece in terms of the forms being organic and then some things look completely different it's reassuring that nothing looks quite like neil and barbara's piece but this might be only a fraction of betty juice's work so tell me what you know about betty juicing she was a really inspirational woman i think and very much within the local community she founded the potter gate gallery uh was very instrumental within the contemporary art movement and a woman as well breaking bad areas very much so i mean i think people forget how difficult it was for women to be making a difference in that that sort of era well really interesting to see these pieces and i think if we're going to go on the trail of henry moore we need to find out more about betty juicin the woman and her work i think you're going to have a very interesting research journey back in london i need some images of neil and barbara's sculpture so i've sent it to a studio which specializes in 3d scanning the team are using photogrammetry which is the process of reconstructing 3d models of objects using 2d photographs this specially designed rig acts as a robotic photographer capturing hundreds of overlapping images from different angles these images are then processed with special software to mesh them together the result is a 3d digital model which can be rotated and viewed from any angle i now have a supreme overall image of neil and barbara's sculpture for anyone studying art these days it's an invaluable innovation how could a henry moore sculpture end up in the garden of murgate hall according to local history the artist visited on several occasions but is that true it turns out henry moore was well connected to this area in the early 1920s his family moved from industrial yorkshire to norfolk in the hope that the country here would help moore's ailing father moore's sister elizabeth had already settled in the village of mulbarton the young sculptor was living in london studying and then teaching at the royal college of art but during the holidays he stayed there and intriguingly this is just along the road from murgate hall it's so fascinating to think that henry moore stayed here with his sister elizabeth who lived here with her husband in the old school house and he was head master at the school just next door and this is about what just a mile and a half from murgate hall i've got a letter here that he wrote when he was staying at the schoolhouse written in 1927 and he describes his average day it's a fascinating account so he says up about nine begin carving about ten car for an hour then stretch my legs getting a pair or two off the pear tree then to it again until 12 30. lunch and reading the daily news until two he's got a whole routine going on here carve again till four after which a game of croquet my aim he says is to now increase the hours of carving by cutting down on the croquet and the paper reading just that's just a brilliant insight and then we've even got a drawing he did here at the school house and i love this bit here these are all the works i haven't done so he's got all these in his mind hasn't got around to them yet except this one on the right of the woman stretching her arms up in the air because he did complete that one and here it is and what this shows is that henry moore was working sculpting here at mould barton just so close to mur gate hall is it possible that his and betty jesus paths did cross it's an intriguing possibility i'm in east london on the hunt for evidence to find out if neil and barbara sculpture could be a work by henry moore i need to discover how it was made and crucially what it's made of i've sent the piece to rupert harris one of the country's leading sculpture conservators he conserves works in the royal collection and in museums and art galleries all over the world as well as civic sculptures standing in our towns and cities hello rupert hello philip nice to see you hey nice to see you let me um go and get the sculpture for you thank you rupert has intimate knowledge of the works of henry moore so i'm keen to see what he makes of neil and barbara's piece so you you've had a lot of experience with henry moore sculptures haven't you a fair amount yes yeah i think we've probably worked on over 60 or 17. we've seen most of his styles right through the period of his life so i'm very familiar with form yeah now i'm intrigued to know what are your first feelings of response to this piece well it has elements that you would say are exactly as more would make objects i mean particularly the head and this we'll call it the rhinoceros horn this is very typical in a scene in a large number of more sculpture and the whole bone shape form is something that he repeated time and time again what do you think of those feet which look a little bit strange i haven't seen them almost like elephants they are slightly worrying because normally with these sorts of forms they would balance naturally on the points of the sculpture rather than having deliberate feet so they are they are unusual without a doubt how about the materials what's it made out of well i think the areas on the top and on the rhinoceros horn are where it's been handled and rubbed which is exposed the underlying metal which in this case is has a yellowish tinge to it which would indicate a copper alloy or whether it's a brass or a bronze i don't know but the other thing which i often do with sculpture all metals have a certain ring to them and so i would gently tap sculpture and if i tap this [Music] and in this case it sounds very hard quite bell-like and it could easily be the sound you'd expect from a bronze rather like a bell henry moore started his career carving stone and wood but after the second world war he embraced the use of bronze so that could be the sound of bronze that we've just heard but it doesn't hugely look like bronze to be not the sort of bronzer i associate with henry moore no i would absolutely agree with you this gray white finish is very unusual but i understand that it was a water feature at some point and if that's the case and over a long period of time limescale builds up on bronze it quite likes bronze and it could well be that what we're looking at is a bronze sculpture coated in lime scale now that's reassuring because that's the thing that's always worried me about this is is the materials so at first glance it might not look like it this could be moore's favorite metal of of bronze it could be so what we're looking at suggests you henry moore but but the unfathomable part now is exactly what the materials are and how it was made which could take us closer or further away absolutely yeah the trail of henry moore has led me to the north norfolk coast [Music] not far from wells next to the sea moore had another family home his other sister mary had taken a teaching post in the village of wyton and moore was a regular visitor the schoolhouse where moore stayed is now an art gallery and home to diana cohen hello fiona john how very nice to meet you welcome to wyden i can't see your garden and what you found in it let's go out i've come here because neil and barbara aren't the only ones to have made a discovery in a norfolk back garden this is a lovely view absolutely lovely dana so is this what you found in the garden yes we were leveling the ground and we unearthed this and alfred said this has been worked on look you can definitely see a head emerging and you can see chisel marks diana and her late husband the artist arthur cohen suspected they'd stumbled on the beginnings of a work by henry moore so they decided to show it to him we'd have tea with henry moore one day and we took it with us in an old markson spencer carrier bag and he said oh he said i remember doing that piece he said i broke my best chisel doing that and i was so cross he said how kindly you should bring it back thank you thank you so much after we'd had tea my husband said what a lousy art dealer you are you find a henry morning go and give it back to him so you gave it back to him and he remembered making it he remembered making it yes yes and then years later we were going to put on henry moore exhibition here at the schoolhouse and we went down to select the pieces to his house at much harlem and i told them about this piece and we couldn't find it anywhere we looked and looked and looked and then my husband saw it being used as a doorstop and he said that is it so we had that in the exhibition and of course then after that they gave it back to me and these chisels are these henry moores yes we found them in the ground the handles were rotted away but there were four chisels we found we've got some photographs actually of him here very smartly in his bow tie and always with a cigarette yes as you can see there and working away with this extraordinary view and and being inspired by the landscape and of course the ground is full of these stones which inspired him he had a whole collection of them henry moore said there is in nature a limitless variety of shapes and rhythms it was on his visits to norfolk that he first began collecting flints bones and natural forms actually when you think about particularly his monumental sculptures you can see those shapes evolving out of these natural forms and of course this kind of flint is everywhere everywhere in norfolk it's in there everywhere every time you dig the ground you'll find something more said of his homes in melbourne and here in wyton i'm thankful for these two spots in norfolk where i can sit in the open air cross-legged on patches of grass and chip stone [Music] we don't know how the piece that we're investigating ended up in a norfolk garden but the fact that you found this genuine henry moore in your garden at least shows us it is possible and we took it back to him and he identified and said yes it was mine you can't get a better authentication than that if only we could still do that now exactly exactly [Music] i'm returning to the henry moore foundation to find out about moore's working methods curator dr hannah him is going to show me where many of his ideas began hello hello philip should we go in love to this is moore's maquette studio it was his place of inspiration where he surrounded himself with a myriad of shapes and textures moore's collection of found objects stones bones and natural forms intermingle with hundreds of maquettes the plaster models he'd make when experimenting with ideas [Music] it's such a privilege to be in a place like this to be able to get into so great an artist's mind does this yeah it's an incredible um place actually from 1940 onwards henry moore makes all of his sculpture his all of his monumental bronzes that have now become so iconic they begin in the palm of his hand as one of these sketch models these little studies these sculptural studies and the benefit he found of working in this way was that he could turn it round he could see his idea from all angles and he had this wonderful capacity to imagine something on a large scale even though he was uh conceiving of it in this small form and i i could also see loads of found objects natural objects as well yes henry moore collected natural organic objects throughout his life be they pebbles on the beach or seashells bones both unearthed bones but also even those from the sunday roast pot and of course flint's from the nearby fields which he would pick up on his uh walks and they lined the shells intermingled in complete meritocracy really with his maquettes and these were the things that inspired so many of his works and he called this his library of natural forms so how would he have gone about making a monumental work very very often these natural forms these found objects were the inspiration they were the idea so sometimes he would add plasticine or plaster to a stone or a bone and they were experiments they sometimes ended up being worked up first at this size by more than often with the help of his assistance to a an intermediary size working model about sort of this uh sort of size um and then of course uh again to form those monumental bronzers we're so familiar with so this was really a kind of encyclopedia of henry moore's thoughts and experiments and creative processes over a course of a lifetime the workshop of his mind absolutely it's extraordinary to think that so many famous works by moore have had their beginnings here hannah has given me some time to explore there's so much here so much to inspire henry moore i mean this literal bone like this i mean there's a skull of a rhinoceros i think and whale bone and then there are flints and shells and all sorts of things that you can imagine with a starting point for ideas that look as though they're almost changing into art as you look at them i'm particularly looking for anything that resonates with neil and barbara's sculpture and there's one object there that looks particularly intriguing i'd love to get a close look at it i've asked neil and barbara to join me here at perry green i've got something to show them that i hope might bring us closer to henry moore well hi again hello hello hello hello so we're surrounded with all of the the ideas the thoughts of henry moore's sculptures to be and amongst them all there is this one that i'd like to show you oh yes it's got the same feeling about it it's got the shape it's got the shape without the the the tooth part but it's got the shape it's it's fantastic so the question that we have to ask is does this object in some way relate to yours could it be the starting point the flame of a thought that then becomes yours what a thought it is quite amazing really is to think that that could have become that makes it all seem a bit more real it does well we still have an awful lot more to try and sure and i feel that in this sort of big task ahead of us this is a foothold definitely are you all right it's quite some idea isn't it just ask you to pinch me it's very exciting fantastic [Music] back at the gallery we're trying to establish a timeline to do that we need to date neil and barbara's piece so if neil and barbara's sculpture is by henry moore we've got to work out how it fits into his body of work and if we can put a date on it we'll be able to work out when betty juice and might have acquired it well i've been looking at henry moore's catalog resume look at this this is from 1940 and intriguingly it's called pointed form drawing from metal sculpture i mean there's absolutely no question about it there's a real resonance in this sculpture of of images like that you know the points and the hollows of course you think that about that have a look at this there's a whole series of them again from 1940 yeah and one of them was in fact made into a metal sculpture look at that very distinctive point again this is 1940. but then from the same set of drawings one didn't become a sculpture until nearly 30 years later in 1968. yeah but i suppose that's not all together surprising because we do know that henry moore would return to his earlier dreams and thoughts and they would sort of erupt later in his career well a whole series of erupted because look at all these again these are all late 60s all with these distinctive points and that raises the question if barbara neil's piece isn't by henry moore is it from 1940 thereabouts or from the late 1960s well it could of course be 1940s but it also has i don't know slightly later feel to it it feels the updates from the late 60s when all of these these points were pushing up through his art but that does concern me slightly because if henry moore let's say he gave a sculpture to betty juice in the late 60s he was a renowned international superstar at this point so how did it end up in the garden yeah it does feel a bit odd doesn't it have you managed to establish any more about the link between henry moore and betty jewesson well we still got that story that sort of local folklore the henry moore visited betty houston at murgate hall but i need to try and find some evidence for that workout it's true and then we still got this thing that is nagging away at me slightly that betty and herself was a sculptor yeah and i have to say that that's been the back of my mind also but do we have a clearer idea of what her sculpture looked like well i've seen some also in the garden and they don't look anything like the sculpture that we're looking at but i need to see more to find out more about betty juices work i've come to goldsmiths at the university of london we know that betty was a member of the women's international art club so i'm meeting una richmond who's extensively researched the group hello welcome thank you very much their archives are held here in the women's art library i'm hoping una can tell me more about the elusive betty juicin [Music] so oona we know betty was a member of the women's international art club what was that the women's international art club was set up in around 1900 and aimed to provide an opportunity for women artists to exhibit because at that time there were a few opportunities and to a certain extent that remained the same for most of the 20th century and did betty have to be a sculptor of a certain stature to be accepted into the club yes she did there was a selection process and we've actually got um betty jason's application form it was gone a on it that means she was accepted and elected to the club when betty was elected in 1973 she was in good company famous sculptors barbara hepworth and elizabeth frink were also members a year later betty was part of a women's international art club exhibition in london the feminine eye it's called as you can't imagine calling calling an exhibition women's sculptures the feminine eye these days can you and so oh right so this is her piece here betty juice and parentage it's hard to see why that's called parentage isn't it it's a it's a profile bronze and it was five inches by five inches so what like that so pretty tiny actually unlike the piece that we're looking at which is considerably larger other exhibition catalogues include more of betty's works will i find anything close to neil and barbara's piece if i do it could be game over dancers embrace and polar bears two in bronze one in brass okay that's interesting to know the material she was working in but sadly no images those titles certainly don't sound like neil and barbara's sculpture one more catalog to go will neil and barbara's piece be listed so here we go betty jason and eagle both in bronze photographs i'm afraid not i'm so desperate seeing more images of her work she was a gallery owner as well wasn't she yes we have a press cutting of the opening of her pottergate gallery in norwich in october 1973. a former florist in pottergate norwich has been converted into an art gallery which intends to become a showcase for contemporary work in the city and is this betty here yes with the gray hair which is pretty redoubtable actually smiling away though betty exhibited her own work at her gallery and she caught the notice of the art review magazine the sculptures of betty juice and are small competent pieces in bronze and aluminium and show an individual approach particularly the interpretation of the horse and rider theme horse and rider theme i mean that doesn't sound like our sculpture either like neil and barbara's piece any more pictures any further this trail goes i'm afraid not i need to see more images of her work if i'm going to try and establish where there's any chance that she could be the one responsible for neil and barbara's culture derby is our next stop on the trail of neelam barbara sculpture we need to examine the work forensically so rupert and i are heading to a materials testing lab the facility is equipped with all manner of machines and devices designed to analyze different metals to determine whether the work is by henry moore we need to find out how it was made and crucially what it's made of first we're using an industrial x-ray to look through the sculpture this should give us some indication of how neil and barbara's piece was constructed but will it be in keeping with moore's techniques well well well this is a surprise i'm looking at this x-ray this is a solid casting the reason i know that is that where you have density high density you have the white and normally with a hollow bronze you would have a cavity inside here um which there isn't in this case you see that's a surprise to me because when you tapped it earlier it sounded hollow that sounds hollow but clearly judging by the x-rays is not okay so that's curious but how do you think it would have been made then i mean looking at the x-ray i think it's sound casting sand casting is the process by which a plaster maquette is pressed into sand to create a mold of its shape molten metal is then poured into the void to create a solid sculpture did henry moore use the sand casting process yes he did many of the founders he used specialized in sand casting however a sculpture of this size i would normally have expected to be hollow so it strikes me that this x-ray is showing both good and bad news we know the process that this was made from is one that henry moore used but the fact that it's solid is a concern it is a concern so it's now i think more important than ever to work out what it's made from that might take us closer to an answer absolutely yeah our investigation into neil and barbara's sculpture has taken a troubling turn i'm heading west to devon in search of answers there's someone i want to meet who i hope can help us answer whether neil and barbara's sculpture is a work by betty dewson or not i've managed to track down betty's son ed juicing hi fiona hi good to see you come this way thank you ed has several of his mother's works on display in his home and garden he's gathered them together so i can see whether there's anything similar to neil and barbara's piece well ed this is a lovely collection of sculptors here these are all by by your mother by betty they are this is rather lovely it's lovely yes i mean this to me definitely looks like a horse yep but otherwise they're very organic shapes aren't they what kind of materials did she use generally well anything from bronze obviously to the cement fondue which is something she used quite a lot through to welding together farm implements and so forth so it was a great variety that she used i got a photograph of her here there well look at that there she is and that was taken in the mid 70s right when she was sculpting yeah and what was betty like as a character character is a good word she was quite a character and was much loved by all she had a great laugh she had a wild sense of humor and live life to the full i'd like to bet her she sounds great i wish you had will you miss her terribly let me show you a picture of the sculpture that we are looking at this is it here now do you recognize it as one of your mother's works [Music] no i haven't seen it before well they're hoping it's by henry moore so that's good news for neil and barbara i mean do you that's very good news actually and do you look at this and think it could have been one of your mothers well it's always possible she was a great follower of henry moore and um really liked the way he sculpted because this was found in the long grass at your former home where you grew up at merger hall hit by a strimmer wow bother if it is by henry dare right there i thought i'd cleared them all up but obviously i've missed that one let me ask you about another important connection there's so local folklore if you like that henry moore visited your home betty's home on a number of occasions do you remember henry moore coming to the house ah no i don't i'm afraid okay so that's less good news what about i'm thinking given that your mother was a sculptor and a trained as an artist and she opened a gallery of course the potter gate gallery in norwich did she move in the kind of artistic circles where she might have met henry moore that way well she could have done i mean she was a great friend of augustus john and i think there's some connection between augustus john and henry miller that's the renowned peter augustus in fact he drew several portraits of my mother and that's one of them it's absolutely enchanting yes gosh it is she looks beautiful but what a beautiful portrait as well so she could have met any more through augustus john i think it's more than possible yeah and if if in the end we do find out that neil and barbara's piece which you missed when you were clearing out the cards in the murgate hall if if it does turn out to be a henry moore how do you feel about that well um i mean obviously i've been delighted for neil and barbara um will teach me to clear up after myself um but also by understanding that my mother was definitely in contention it shows her work in quite a good light which which makes me feel very good back at the gallery i've invited neil and barbara for an update so i've asked you to come here today because i have some news for you so i met betty juice and son ed first of all the good news is he does not recognize your piece as being by his mum [Music] that's good that's a relief isn't it yes the bad news is he he has no recollection or knowledge of henry moore visiting his mother at murgay hall so we've done a bit of digging augustus john the famous painter looks a character he does he's a great picture isn't it now he was a friend of betty jason so was there any connection between augustus john and henry moore now when we looked through some of the archive of henry moore what we found is this letter from the 21st of november 1979 and look at this bit here this is henry moore writing he says i think i met him augustus john around 1928 when i had my first one-man exhibition at warren gary in london john bought two or three drawings so there we've got a link a link yeah between augustus john and henry moore you'll notice he bought droids he didn't buy sculptures because i was thinking is it possible that augustus john bought a sculpture he needed better juice and did he give it a better juicer yes yeah i can't make that connection no so dug a bit further so here we've got betty it's a great picture as well isn't it lovely lady brings back a few memories yeah it does amazing lady you remember she had the potter gate gallery yeah so here she is looking very different oh my goodness now this character here this is bernard reynolds it's a sculptor okay this is an exhibition this is her first exhibition actually the portuguese gallery in 1973. now bernard reynolds was one of henry moore's first assistants in 1936. yeah wow there's a link there there's a link there and that's not the only one let me take you back to the potter gate gallery i want to look at this man here okay now this is john farnham and john farnham also worked for henry moore's one of his assistants here he is henry of course from 1960 until henry moore's death in 1986. and here he is working on one of his scratches not one but two assistants linked to betty jason but also crucially linked to henry north we're so close that's incredible so interesting not quite there yet but we're getting closer fantastic thank you back in derby we're trying to find an answer to a crucial question one that could solve this mystery once and for all what is neil and barbara's piece made of mythologist ian copestick is using x-ray fluorescence also known as xrf to detect the elements present henry moore used a variety of materials throughout his career but his favorite by far was bronze strong yet malleable it allowed him greater freedom to create the monumental sculptures he's famed for [Music] bronze is an alloy consisting of copper and tin along with other trace metals but will the xrf detect these vital elements hi so are we any closer to working out what this is made of well i'm getting copper i'm getting tin which are the the main constituents in bronze but the tin content isn't really high enough to class it as a as a bronze alloy i'm also getting quite a lot of lead and zinc in the analysis that's slightly problematic because that would indicate with different alloy than bronze itself that's disappointing yes the limitations of this instrument it only is able to see a fraction of a millimeter into the metal surface so anything that is on the surface will significantly skew so the amount of corrosion on the surface that would suggest that there is likely to be quite a lot of contamination of the reading that that ian's getting that's correct the only way to get an accurate reading is to take a sample of the sculpture and analyze it only then will we discover what neil and barbara's piece is made of since we last met betty's son ed has been doing his own detective work hi vienna ed very nice to see you very good to see you he's eager for us to see more of his mother's works so he's contacted family and friends all over the country to track them down [Music] ed wow i mean this is an incredible collection it's quite something isn't it i mean actually some of these i haven't seen before there's a wonderful array of abstract shapes in bronze brass and aluminium but i can't help noticing that some of them have the same motifs as neil and barbara's piece now looking at these the point in the center and looking at neil and barbara's look at the point there hmm there's a definite similarity isn't that well there is but also i've looked at drawings by henry moore in his studio and this is the kind of thing that henry moore was doing so it's very much a motif of henry moore as well okay i can't help but be drawn to these two beside me so this is the plaster maquette and then this is the bronze here so look let's look again at our meals now that think about that knobbly head if you like can you see similarities there indeed very much yeah but again this is very much a motive of henry moore as well yeah two artists using the same motifs one inspired by the other can we untangle who created neil and barbara's piece i'm going to put you on the spot now what's your instinct well i hope it's probably my mother but um you know the jury is out they don't back in derby rupert and i are heading to a forensic engineering lab it's equipped with a scanning electron microscope which should reveal what neil and barbara's sculpture is made of a small sample is placed in a chamber electrons interact with the sample producing signals that can help identify the elements present rupert and i are waiting for forensic engineer arthur green to process the results we're finally about to find out whether neil and barbara sculpture is made in a material used by henry moore hi arthur hello hi so have you managed to ascertain the metal that neil and barbara's sculpture is made of we have yes so we've analyzed it using our electron microscope and um so i can show you the results now and as you can see it's consistent with an aluminium alloy aluminium alloy yes that's correct so that big red jagged peak is all aluminium yep rupert have you ever heard of henry moore using aluminium alloy the answer is no cast in many other metals but not aluminium as far as i'm aware it's not good news is it i don't think it's good news and i think it's quite surprising really all along we anticipated it was going to be a copper alloy of some sort i thought we were going to be much closer to a metal used by more it's not looking good it's not looking good no we've done all that we can the only option left is to send kneeling barbara sculpture and our dossier of evidence to the review panel it consists of a committee of experts who meet twice a year at perry green and it is they who have the final say as to whether this is by henry moore or not back at the gallery the verdict letter has arrived but while the review panel has been assessing our evidence some new information has come to light well before we give the verdict to tanil and barbara we have to tell them about this latest discovery i know but research is research it's a it's a two-edged sword and we just got to accommodate the facts whatever they are as we find them i mean the stakes are so high if this is a henry moore it could be worth up to a million pounds neil and barbara are on their way to the gallery we're all about to hear the decision from the review panel as to whether their sculpture is at work by henry moore or not but first we need to tell them the latest twist in the tale hello hello hi nina barbara so i've got here the verdict but before i tell you what's in there i just want to share with you some new information that's come to light after we sent our dossier of evidence to the henry moore foundation ed betty dewson's son went to visit a family relative who had not been able to see for over a year because of the lockdown right and while he was there he found this recognize it yes henry he thinks this picture was taken in the garden of his mother's betty jesus gallery the potter gate okay on the back of it is written betty juicin and at the bottom fondue so cement which is odd because we know that henry here as you call it is not made of cement now ed thinks that this writing is not his mother's not betty's so whoever wrote this got the materials wrong it's not cement but whoever wrote it thought it was a work by betty jason okay okay so that person might be right might be wrong can't say but what it certainly doesn't do is take us any closer to henry and um we now have another issue that we need to share with you and that is that we have had the metal tested and it is not ron's as we had hoped or expected but it's aluminium alloy now as far as we know that is not something that henry moore ever used but betty juicin did but it's not over yet the odds are stacked against us but the final decision rests with the henry moore foundation review panel do you want to hear the verdict definitely please dear mr and mrs betts unfortunately the panel members are in agreement that the work is not by henry moore i'm sorry not to bring more positive news and i thank you for bringing this work to our attention so sorry well it was going to be one or the other wasn't it i mean for what it's worth from the first moment i saw that i was impressed by its presence and and its boldness and it hardly surprises me that the foundation took an interest in it no i've got it i'm gutted for you no don't be the journey's been really good journey's been incredible we've had such a good time it's been lovely he will go back to being a doorstop again and a treasured memory really and will you still call him henry alright definitely he will always be henry i feel so sorry for neil and barbara what a disappointment and they really took it on the chin didn't they on the other hand i really enjoyed getting to know betty juice she was clearly a remarkable woman and a serious talent and also it's a reminder of just what a colossal presence henry moore was in in 20th century sculpture and how he created a language that was so potent that it influenced generations of artists if you think you have an undiscovered masterpiece or other precious object contact us at bbc dot co dot uk fake or fortune [Music] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: mightwenotbehappy

Views: 230,627

Keywords: FAKE OR FORTUNE, ART, PHILLIP MOULD, FIONA BRUCE, HENRY MOORE

Id: Xnfh3G6lJ9w

Length: 59min 2sec (3542 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021