FAKE OR FORTUNE: 9X04 BENJAMIN WEST

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 mould 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 a 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 in this episode a welsh farmer turned art hunter is this how you pass the sort of long nights of lambing when you're waiting for the next one to arrive discovers that not all that glitters is gold this has been made to deceive can our investigation prove that a painting found on ebay is really a lost work for king george iii i'm going to be looking at this painting probably for more hours than anyone since the artist painted it we draw together the worlds of art and forensic science it would be first time in faithful fortune that human remains helped us with an attribution to try and help this amateur art sleuth prove he's found a lost treasure just remind us what did you buy it for only big oh yeah [Music] our fake or fortune investigations have taken us to some beautiful locations across the world this time we've been called to anglesey at the northern tip of wales somewhere both i and philip know well well it's great to be back in north wales i used to come here as a child on holiday gosh i spent ages down here as a kid in fact the high point was when i entered the clan fest in york fantasy dress competition as john lennon and did you win unfortunately runner-up only i broke my circular glasses we're here at the request of farmer hugh lewis far from the high-end galleries and auction houses philip's more familiar with hugh hunts for art treasures online we're here to talk about hughes paintings which he bought on ebay which is a pretty bold move given how many fakes we've discovered out there well that's a pastime riven with risk but i'm intrigued to know what he's turned up as covid restrictions stop us meeting in the farmhouse we've been offered sanctuary in the local church hello hugh hello hi very nice to meet you nice to meet you as well we've arranged to look at some of hugh's paintings i have never dared buy paintings on ebay furniture yes but paintings no and i'm immediately reminded of how shark infested these waters can be this is classic uh buying online territory you've been taken in by a painting that that was designed to look like an oil painting oh yeah but it isn't okay so that's one dream crushed well don't fit it the date of the painting i'm afraid it's not as it should be yeah that's really disappointing this is a classic trapper in that way we call them trappers you know and they take your eye you get excited deal done you bring it home and bob's not your uncle little knowledge is a dangerous thing perhaps despite the setbacks hugh has another picture he's particularly excited about this is a painting of the last supper i saw it online and you can see the oil sketch underneath which is really quite well done the last supper big subject [Music] this is one of the most recognizable scenes in western art christ at the center his apostles reacting to the shocking news that he will soon die the bread and the wine familiar symbols of his sacrifice and judas shown wrestling with the decision to betray his master and whose research extends to a possible artist i believe it's benjamin west he started painting in america then he came to this country benjamin west claimed he first learned to paint when native americans showed him how to mix pigments from mud after leaving america and settling in britain success followed quickly and he became one of the most famous artists of the 18th century the bold storytelling of his paintings captivated london crowds cued to see his canvases filled with moments of drama and high emotion and his biggest fan was king george iii painted here by west he made west his official history painter and together they aimed to bring about a magnificent new era in british art during the 20th century many of west's works left britain and are now in the museums and galleries of america i wonder what makes you think that this rather dark and damaged looking painting could be an overlooked west had a bit of a gird it with what looks like a brillo pad down the bottom so there's real quality there the condition you're right a bit problematic but if we could attach the name benjamin west to it yeah i mean that from an art historical point of view from a commercial point of view is worth having so how much did you pay for it um well it was advertised online for 50 pounds as a starting bid and nobody paid so i could for the original price of 50 pounds which is amazing really well well 50 quid is a heartening starting point for you uh if this is right i suspect you know to to someone who who feels attached to this type of artist subject matter 30 000 pounds possibly more sounds interesting it's good buy a lot of sheep without you yes yes yes i want to take a moment to get to know this painting there's a lot that really intrigues me about hugh's picture i was brought up a catholic i i was an altar boy across the border in liverpool and i'm used to this image this this story narrated in the new testament pictorially but not quite like this there's a sort of journalistic energy to this composition christ is in the middle but then the disciples are grouped on the left and the right they're huddled they're discussing they're talking and then there's the technique itself there's a sort of softness a sort of rather burnished quality look how the painter has modulated the composition so your eye goes from light to dark the italians have a word for it kiera but the other point is though this is not a fully resolved painting it's it's work in progress work that is i think unquestionably a sketch but despite the fact that there's so much going for it there are aspects of this painting that worry me there are areas they've been scrubbed got at by some failed restoration process i find that a bit disturbing one thing that's also slightly worrying is i cannot see a signature now west was one of those artists who loved he was a self-promoter he just loved leaving his signature on things i would like to have found that that would have been quite reassuring like a sort of hallmark on a piece of silver that would have been rather useful and perhaps i shouldn't be motivated in so simplistic a way but wouldn't it be wonderful to turn a 50 pound ebay purchase into a genuine work by benjamin west i want to know if you can throw any light on who owned his painting before what did you manage to find out about the provenance of the painting well well the seller did say that um the painting had been in storage for 60 years and it belonged to his wife's father previously it belonged to an old woman in a big house who paid it in lieu of a debts for some building work the family had done for them and whereabouts in the country was always going on sorry in surrey right yes and that's as far back as as the seller was able to take it for you yes so what we've got with the provenance then is you've got the seller who lived in surrey it had been in storage for 60 years yes he and his wife had inherited it from his wife's father yeah and the father got it for a building job right and instead of getting money got this painting yes the family thought it was worthless so it might turn out that the painting that they thought was worthless actually you with your eye yeah i've found something that could be very valuable we don't know it could be yeah hopefully hopefully i did message him after buying the painting and he said well if it's worth a million please don't tell me he's all he said [Laughter] yeah but he was quite good humored about it so it's not nice of him philosophical perhaps oh yeah yeah yeah there's some work to be done i think well that's that's what we're here for yes to do that work yeah and if we do manage to transform your ebay bargain by into a benjamin west do you think you'll sell it do you think you'll hang on to it um well things like this can be life-changing or at least help farming is a very precarious industry at the moment so it'd be pretty handy oh yes yes yes it will probably be sold if it's genuine or fingers crossed then yes yes fingers crossed [Music] to begin my investigation into hughes painting i'm heading to another church slightly larger this time the chapel of saint peter and paul in greenwich [Music] i need to find out more about west and whether the last supper was a subject he ever painted to help with my research i've arranged to meet desmond shaw taylor [Music] desmond hello good to see you he's the most recent surveyor of the queen's pictures a position west once held in the court of george iii we're meeting in front of the only west work still hanging in the space it was made for a painting of saint paul shipwrecked [Music] this is an epic work isn't it desmond benjamin west specialized in full scale figure paintings in the great tradition of raphael and michelangelo i think what he sort of adds not perhaps you can't add much to raphael and michelangelo but what he his particular take on it i think of these very abrupt transitions from light to dark you can see particularly that area of light in the center of the composition which you can't actually see the fire but you can see the light of the fire so you see these these shapes in dramatic silhouette it's certainly stunning to see that i mean and trying to relate it to to the little sketch that we've got i just want to ask you some questions about that so desmond what we're looking at is a possible benjamin west sketch for last supper last supper good there are actually two paintings of the last supper by benjamin west for george the third two really important commissions at windsor and the first is a a new built chapel the chapel of revealed religion and uh basically it was gonna it was gonna tell the the entire story of the christian religion from beginning to end very great very grand and its high altar was going to look like that the last supper sitting on the altar table as last suppers should because it's it is about the communion wafer and the wine and what happened to that never built a project entirely abandoned so george the third commissioned benjamin west to paint a last supper for this new chapel at winter which then never got built the painting was painted yes the clearly was never hung there absolutely so you mentioned two last suppers what about the other other one it was created for saint george's chapel at windsor and that definitely does exist i mean that's where harry and megan got married and we all know it very well absolutely and i'm showing you here a watercolor of it exactly the same position immediately over the auto table and it was set off by huge stained glass above also designed by benjamin west showing the resurrection of christ so that's an intriguing start there's not one but two large-scale benjamin west last suppers both altarpiece paintings for king george iii so if hughes painting is genuine it has to be a preparatory work for one of those our next job has to be to find those two large finished works the first one made for the never built chapel royal is now in the stores of the tate usually i'd be rushing to see it in the flesh but kovid shutting down museums all over the world has meant that we have to rely on digital technology to make a comparison so what we now need to do is work out where the huge little ebay sketch could in any way be preparatory for the tate picture this monumental two meters by three meters composition and at first glance a very very similar concept painting it's the last supper it's christ at the center a very sacred significant and much portrayed scene and the light is rather similar the sense of the tent and the moon that strong drapery so the question is how does that compare to hugh sketch well i can see some similarities but there are so many things that are different for it that i just can't quite get past so the figure of judas is the really obvious one because it's so dominant isn't it in hughes painting he's there big and brooding and tortured right in the foreground about to exit right and i presume that's judas sitting there on the right is it in that painting and i have to say i did i said i prefer it in in a huge sketch and then when i look at that christ in benjamin west's painting he slightly looks like those kind of romantic princes in the ladybird books i used to read as a child you know when you look at his face and then you look at the one in hugh's picture and there is a very different face isn't it older with the weight of the world on his shoulders and i think you put your finger on it there are some fundamental differences here your eye goes from the divine image of christ through to the huddled troubled one of judas not necessarily with this one in the days there are definitely similarities there's the same sort of the gene pool of thinking is the same but but no it doesn't feel like one is the sketch for the other so were decided hughes painting can't be a sketch for the 1784 royal chapel altarpiece painting we have to hope that the second one is a better match [Music] west may have been american but he was at the heart of the british art establishment in the 18th century and one of the founders of the royal academy although it like the tate is closed to visitors i'm being allowed access to their archives by curator annette wickham hello fiona hi nick nice to see you [Music] wow that is a very striking picture isn't it west was one of the artists who successfully petitioned george iii to establish the royal academy to promote the visual arts portrayed here in his president's hat on his president's throne west remains its longest serving president a position he held for 27 years his name appears in decades worth of exhibition records i'm on the hunt for any entry that might refer to hughes painting the first reference i can find to a last supper by benjamin west is in 1784 and this is a list of paintings exhibited at uh the royal academy in that year and we've got here number 437 the last supper a design for a picture for his majesty's chapel in windsor castle that's the picture i looked at with philip that's now in the tate and we don't think that hughes picture is a preparatory sketch for that last supper but what is good to know is that benjamin west was exhibiting his sketches the next reference i can find is a bit of a jump ahead all the way to 1804. now here we've got the last supper the original sketch for the great picture over the communion table in the collegiate church at windsor i've done enough raw weddings in my time for the bbc to know that the collegiate church is the same for saint george's chapel so this i think is a sketch that we're interested in when it comes to hugh's particular picture what's very frustrating is although it shows it was exhibited it has no information about its size any dimensions at all or any description of it so that's encouraging and sort of frustrating equal measure and then finally 1806 so another year on again sketch for the picture of the last supper the altarpiece of saint george's chapel windsor benjamin west but no details no dimensions and this is the same sketch it was as it was shown in a previous year so that's at least one sketch for the royal chapel and more promisingly one possibly two for saint george's chapel the lack of description makes them too vague to identify as hughes i wonder whether we know where those sketches are today and if one of them could be hugh's picture what we do know is that there are two sketches by west for his last supper which have been identified and their whereabouts are known um one for st george's chapel one for the chapel that was never built but there is possibly a third sketch and hasn't been seen or recorded for over a hundred years a missing last supper sketch that's right i like the sound of that well there are references to it um from the works that uh west's sons inherited from him eventually they started selling off the work well this is exciting so it's possible if it exists it could be hugh's picture it's possible so i need to find a record of that sale and see what i can dig out that's right likes of it you're welcome so now we know west produced sketches for his two windsor altarpiece paintings after a bit more digging i found out that one for the royal chapel and one for saint george's chapel both went to buyers in the united states in the 20th century but what of the third possible sketch not seen for over 100 years could you have found that sketch a missing sketch is certainly intriguing but i still need to be sure hugh's picture is a preparatory work for a finished painting [Music] i've located west's second altarpiece painting the sid george's chapel last supper since 1980 it's been in america at the detroit institute of arts one of the world's great art collections and a museum i'm familiar with but with international travel prohibited i've arranged to see it through curator benjamin coleman ben hi there well thank you for joining us in this funny way across the atlantic it's always a pleasure to talk about benjamin west even if we need the magic of technology to make it possible right now i can see it behind you now it is quite extraordinary what a magnificent painting what is also remarkable and to me very satisfying is i i'm looking at the two and those similarities are so resounding really familiar signs that that our sketch is so close to your epic work the moon through the left-hand arch is a match the disciples groupings are the same so too the cup and the bread and most identifiably judas is glaring at us from the front of the painting in the same way but you know i mean we are dwarfed by yours what a magnificent painting this painting has such a magnetic pull from across the room it's the the first painting that you see when you round the corner into this tremendous gallery of american art history paintings the painting pulls you in from across the room there's lots of contrast lots of shadow you know in half an instant who is bathed in a kind of virtuous golden light who's cast in a sickly green shadow you know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is so something i'm trying to get my head around ben is how come ours is although the same basic colors so much softer the light is so much gentler than in yours thinking about benjamin west as an artist who sometimes made different versions of of a composition was very eclectic as a painter who experimented with different styles before he settled on finished work it could just be that that benjamin west is experimenting is thinking of an alternative idea a different mood for the last supper there is though a less reassuring possibility and and what are the challenges in trying to prove a benjamin west as authentic in your experience it's a big question uh certainly we we know that west had many students and many imitators so it certainly doesn't seem unlikely that some of west students or some of his admirers would have made copies after such a major commission as this last supper for the chapel at windsor so hugh's sketch is definitely related to the st george's chapel last supper what we must now do is prove it's a genuine preparatory work by west himself i'm on the hunt for more information about this missing sketch listed in the sale that west's sons held after their father's death west was the highest paid painter of his time and on his death in 1821 his two sons struggled to maintain the lifestyle they'd grown accustomed to at the paul mellon center for studies in british art i've got a copy of that three-day sale so in 1829 benjamin west's sons had effectively a fire sale of all their dad's works it was 180 pictures and when you get to lot 21 what do we have the study for the admired picture placed over the table of the altar of the choir of saint george's chapel windsor now that is exciting because if hugh's picture is a study by benjamin west it's a study for saint george's chapel it describes it this altarpiece was this is an italics because it's clearly particularly important painted by command of his late majesty george iii of course so they're throwing everything at selling this picture and making a big thing of that royal connection now so far i've managed to find out that benjamin wasted a number of last suppers but i haven't had any dimensions here are some dimensions so the last supper is one foot two inches wide so that's 14 inches wide and 10 and a half inches high so when you compare that to hughes hughes picture is 15 and a half inches wide and 11 inches high so it's not exactly the same there's about what an inch half an inch in it and if you think hugh's picture is quite likely to have been relined a number of times and that can change the shape of a picture what 230 years ago it wasn't considered as critical to be that precise about measurements as it is now so i know it's not exactly the same but it's so close so that's massively encouraging the question is did it sell and if it sold who bought it this is an annotated version of the catalog and it has a list of the people who bought it nash now when i think of nash in the 1800s the first name that comes to mind is john nash the celebrated architect who built much of buckingham palace the finest buildings in regency london is it john nash you bought this picture so what have we got we've got a painting here that isn't exactly the same dimensions as hughes but it certainly describes use and the dimensions are as near as dammit so there's a very strong possibility this is huge picture we're seeing in this sale and then a buyer nash could it be john nash that's what i need to look into next i'm keen to see what science can tell us about hugh's picture the surface of the painting is so dark and muddied i can't help thinking that there's more to be revealed underneath i've asked professor aviva bernstock at the courthold institute in london to take a look at it and she's already intrigued hi aviva how are you getting on hello i haven't seen anything like this before it's the first time that i've seen a sketch or a grizzai a black and white picture that's partly painted aviva's infrared imaging is able to penetrate the layers of varnish and paint to reveal the drawing lines below so you can see beneath that brownish coating or the brownish coatings to this sketch that's underneath which looks like it's actually in two different sorts of black it's sort of fluid black and also these hatchings which are very detailed which are done probably in a different sort of dry medium dude that that's really thrilling because you can you can see now that there's this cross hatching this energy this activity well there are a couple of quite a few workings out in the drawing stage for example you can see that christ is now holding the bread whereas he had it on the table beforehand in the sketch phase yes so it's it's a sort of rolling developing project this yeah hey look there's a hand i didn't notice that before do you see that look there's a hand and there's a knee oh my god that's great there's a lot of working out here there's a lot more there's a hand that goes down on the drapery which isn't there because he's now holding his arm yeah fascinating and then there's a knee so he's drawn naked underneath this rope yeah but what does look and feel really distinctive at those sort of impassioned lines uh and the way that the forms are coming out of this sort of thicket of of pencil strokes i think it'd be very hard to imitate that so if we saw it in another picture firmly attributed to west that would be quite good evidence of the similar hand so a characteristic of the artist whoever that person may be to me this looks like the free-flowing work of a truly accomplished artist not a student or faker but aviva's right we'll have to find another example by him in order to prove that this is benjamin west i want to check back in with philip and tell him where i've got to with the provenance well let me show you what i found i found records of the original sketch for saint george's chapel have a look at this lot 21 the last supper this is from a sale in 1829 the dimensions are almost identical to hughes picture and look at the description the study for the admired picture placed over the table of the altar of the choir of st george's chapel windsor so i think there's a very good chance that is hugh's picture sure and does it say who bought it well there's this name here nash i wonder if that could be john nash the the great architect well i wanted the same and in the same sale the same nash bought three benjamin west sketches jacob and laban resurrection of our savior and then cupid complaining to venus of being stung by a bee huh and what happens to them after that well on the death of john nash in 1835 there was a sale and these benjamin west sketches the ones i showed you just now are in that sale so i think we can say the nash of 1829 is john nash the architect sure frustratingly there is no mention anywhere of the last supper there's no record in this sale in 1835 and nash's family destroyed all his personal records after his death a bit of a family scandal apparently so i've hit a dead end there with the paper trail seemingly going cold i need a new strategy could the back of the painting hold any leads [Music] there's a sticker here which i like to see expert in ancient and modern pictures hey market which is two or three minutes from here in central london and then i'm trying to look at the gallery name and there's a letter g maybe the stick has been ripped i just can't quite see what that is what else have we got numbers 3722 on the canvas possibly from an auction house and then above it 405 what looks like w perhaps this one in particular looks familiar i think this could be a christie stencil we've got a sticker and we've got numbers and those are clues and those are something that we can definitely investigate as forensic analysis continues aviva has made an exciting discovery about the pigments in hughes painting and she's keen to share it these are the very very top layers of the picture now we're looking at yes the very top layers and what's really interesting is that you can see that there's a top layer of varnish which contains something and i don't know how to identify it it's this very strongly yellow fluorescing particle here it's just one particle and i don't know what it is i couldn't identify it okay try this thought we know but there's some fantastically lurid accounts for the materials he used in the 18th century such as indian yellow from the urine of cows only federal mango leaves and mummy brown made from real mummies excavated from the ground you know in egypt and places i am skeptical about the materials that people say they used but i have found in this cross section a few characteristic particles she could be mummy i suppose but this fluorescing yellow area could potentially be genuine indian yellow unfortunately i can't do it because i can't identify the materials because they're organic materials but i have a colleague who can do it well please try because it would be the first time in faithful fortune that human remains helped us with an attribution [Music] that dirt and damage seen under aviva's microscope still troubles me and i'm really concerned the painting's condition is now holding us back so we've asked hugh to join us in the gallery hello hi how are you nice to see you nice to see you as well so here we've got a decision to make and the question is to restore it or not now what are the arguments for it if we're going to give this picture every opportunity it's got to look the part and i think there are losses here which are still problematic it's particularly that that section at the bottom isn't it you're thinking where either the color never was there or it's it's it's been abraded off in some way and one of the things i think we've got to really get to terms with is what varnish is meant to be there and how much of it is dirt and that is one of those things that with a restorer we can really understand and i'd love to find a signature but there's still quite a lot i think that needs to come out and restorers used to doing this it's it's first aid it's it's you know it's it's not open heart surgery this but it's first aid i just want to send a note of caution because i mean briefly you are taking a gamble you spent 50 quid on this picture more money will now be spent on having a restored and there's no guarantee at the end of the day that the authenticated panel will come out and say it's a benjamin west and you might have spent the money for nothing so given that are you prepared to put it forward to the restorer yes yes they are shall we put shine once it's cleaned and i will be guided by your judgment i like your style okay to the restorers [Music] i've sent hughes painting to rupert featherston at the hamilton car institute at cambridge university not only is rupert a hugely experienced restorer he also spent many years at the royal collection where they have numerous examples of west's paintings so i'm really keen to hear how the painting stands up to his experienced eye [Music] hello rupert hello how are you so what are your first thoughts about this picture well it's a mixed bag it's very interesting there are features that remind me of west's i've seen but i'm i'm not so sure about all this sort of outlining it's it's slightly unusual they're sort of going like almost like a comic book style isn't there in part it strikes me as having great potential but it's just being held back somehow do you think you're going to be able to resurrect this picture i'm pretty confident we can and you can already see the difference in color so that the the deep turquoisey color of the sky is coming out it was such a sickly green before so how are you going to make sure that you only take off the dirt and not what the artist intended what it doing at the moment is just removing the natural resin and you can tell that on the swab and using ultraviolet so i'm not going through all the layers i certainly won't want to rush into it and and clean all the way through which is what happened before and that's why we've ended up with this sort of abrasion and damage at the bottom what do you take varnish off you've got to put your paint on for example judas's face just reads as a sort of fuzzy blob at the moment but just a couple of little bits of retouching little dots to cover up those areas of ground and you'll be able to see his face again and that sort of scowl and and and angst or whatever the process of conservation takes us back to what the artist intended and might also bring about revelations i would just be so thrilled if you could find a signature i mean where would it be i suppose normally you'd expect a signature along the bottom edge so one might worry that if the signature had been there it may no longer be there i'm going to be looking at this painting probably for more hours than anyone since the artist painted it i suspect so if there is a signature somewhere i really hope i'll be able to spot it [Music] i've been looking into the stencils on the back of hugh's painting i thought that one of them might be from a christie's auction we've had some exciting news from christie's so i've asked hugh to come back down to london so i can share it with him so hugh do you remember the the numbers on the back of your chair yes so there was three seven two two yeah and 405 what looked possibly like a w yes so we went to christie's all right yeah and they said ah that's not 405 w that's 405 v all right so that means it was sold through christie's this was record so it was recorded so what we found out is the date of the sale that that 405 v refers to all right yeah i've got the details here ancient and modern pictures the property of sir william w knighton deceased so on the third day of the sale may the 23rd 1885 it refers to your picture lot 451 this is definitely your picture with 405 v on the back and it says the last supper be west oh that's good i mean that is a massive breakthrough we've been talking about various sketches by benjamin west we now have information about your sketch this is your sketch being sold by christie's and being attributed to benjamin your stamp is on the back 405 v oh and interestingly here it says signed and dated what this tells us is there is a signature on your painting on your sketch so we need to find it i mean it could be someone pretending to be benjamin west but nonetheless at this sale it is attributed to benjamin west that's good so we know that william knighton sold it now who bought it and who did buy it m cole it says christie's thing m cole is probably martin kolnagi who is martin kolnacki martin kolnagi was a very very well-known art dealer all right very well known names and then we come across quite often on faker fortune we're about to find some lead don't we the record of something will there hopefully that's exactly what we're going to do no see if we can hunt down your picture good good like the rest of the world i'm having to take up the challenge of working from home it's been productive and i've managed to make an exciting connection we know benjamin west painted at least one preparatory sketch for the saint george's chapel altarpiece and that it went to america i've managed to locate it and thrillingly it seems to have much in common with hughes it was recently restored for the frillin museum in virginia by conservator beth fulton hi beth hi there how are you today very well i've sent beth all of the images aviva took of hugh's painting and she's shown me hers so together i'm hoping we can spot the same artist's hand at work i'm now looking at the two infrareds next to each other yeah and it's rather exciting isn't it it is they share a lot of similarities just in the way it was drawn you can see there are sort of the sketchy lines that he makes um in the figures to denote volume i i couldn't agree with you more and actually it's almost as if you're looking at an old master draftsman yeah absolutely if we are going to prove or try and prove ourselves by benjamin west we will have to presumably work out where it comes in relation to yours because ours is colored yours isn't there are compositional elements that seem to be slightly closer to the detroit picture the organization of figures the way the table is laid out absolutely it would almost seem therefore that if ours is to be right and it isn't someone just faking it then ours is closer to being the sketch for the detroit picture i would say so i think in terms of a timeline the freylin sketch would come first as he's just putting together this composition and then he's making those changes closer to the final version it feels with beth's help we've mapped out a plausible evolution for this composition but something still concerns me fiona has found out that hughes is supposed to be signed and we haven't seen any evidence of a signature is yours signed yes but it's not an original signature someone added it later right have you any idea when that might have been the paint is fairly easily soluble based on the test that we did so my guess is that it was added sometime in the last 120 years yeah since so so this is an area where there's a bit of dark practice going on yeah there's definitely a an issue with people who might want to try to fake a west however i think in this case it's just someone who's trying to make sure that people are thinking of west when they see this having a fake signature on a fully attributed west is a bit of a shock and a reminder that it takes more than an autograph to prove that a work is genuine so having compared both works does beth believe benjamin west produced hugh's sketch i would have to imagine that it was someone if not the artist himself someone very close to the artist who maybe even worked directly with him yeah but he's not going to be very pleased if we tell him it's by someone we can't name who knew the artist very well and was very familiar with the artist's techniques but right without primary documentation i just can't guarantee uh to say that this is definitely by west unfortunately while we haven't been able to travel abroad the paint sample aviva took from the surface of fuse painting happily made its way to amsterdam and the results are back have the team there been able to identify at a molecular level anything that could identify west as the painting's creator what we know is that west used this great variety of organic materials really exotic daring colors you could say including things it was said like ground mummy that would produce a sort of rich morbid brown literally ground mummy apparently so now we haven't found any of that in the picture but exciting news from class yan from the rice museum laboratory in amsterdam what yan has discovered is a chemical called usanthone which would almost certainly indicate the use of indian yellow indian yellow that is created from the dried urine of cows that have been fed on mango leaves and oh my goodness i want fed on mango leaves to make it extra yellow well presumably a sort of super yellow or something yuck right okay but this is where it gets interesting because in the late 18th century and around that period a lot of artists claimed to use indian yellow but the reality was it was just sort of too expensive these exotic ingredients were beyond them so if you were going to use indian yellow which we know is in huge picture you'd have to be a successful artist just have the money to buy it a successful artist like benjamin west for example exactly so the the paints the cost of the paints narrowed down the range of possibilities as to the artist so benjamin west and his exotic papers who knew back to the christie's stencil on the back of hugh's picture it's proved for us that hugh's sketch was sold at auction in 1885 as a benjamin west we suspect the buyer was art dealer martin kolnagi as kolnagi is one of the oldest art dealerships in britain i'm hoping its archives will reveal more so i've come to the rather magnificent place they're held wadsden manor in buckhimshire [Music] hugh has clearly already settled in like you hello bjorn how are you i'm good look at this do you like it what a play it's just one you wish i'm hoping historian jeremy howard can confirm martin kolnagi was the 1885 buyer and tell us where the painting went next hi there hello welcome to watson thank you very much thank you we're researching hugh's picture which you bought on ebay and we've managed to establish that there is a christie's stock number on the back uh which suggests that it was obviously sold through christie's to an m cole that's all we can see and i'm assuming that's martin cole nagi and i wonder if you can shed any light on that well it could be martin cornage the thing is he didn't work for the family firm for very long he was of actually a very good art dealer was regarded as having one of the best eyes in the business so all right things are looking like hunting yes we have in the archive a miniature of martin kolnagi the man who bought your picture at one stage uh which was done in 1908 the year of his death thank you he looks a very distinguished man doesn't he with a good eye really the first gallery was in the hay market hang on hey market yes there's a market stamp on the back of the paintings exactly because on the back of hugh's picture is a stamp that says modern and ancient pictures hay market well that's really interesting because he would have been in the hay market in the mid 1880s any records of sales fortunately you know i don't think it's possible to check that because unfortunately he died in 1908 he had no children to carry on the business and as far as i know the business records were actually destroyed in 1940 which is when his widow died destroyed it's again i know just like jimmy nash's arkham as well what what is it with these people i have to say i i thought that coming to you jeremy would get us over the line with the archive but there's literally nothing so i think we're going to be unhealthy further unfortunately once again we're thwarted by a destroyed archive and our provenance trail is cut short thanks to the christie stencil and the haymarket label on the back of hughes pictures we know for sure that it was sold in 1885 as being the last supper by benjamin west no question but then whiz forward to the 1960s when we know it came into the possession of the people who then sold it to hugh we've got a gap between 1885 and the 1960s about 70 years so have we done enough well we do know there was a benjamin west last supper it's missing and it's almost exactly the same dimensions as hughes is that enough i hope so it's time to wrap up our investigation rupert has completed the restoration work and we're all meeting back at the gallery hello hi hugh hi hi hugh can i introduce rupert hello nice to meet you looking forward to seeing this oh what a different painting isn't it rupert has dramatically rectified over 200 years worth of damage and mistreatment it's more of a light and dark quality to the thing that wasn't there it's fantastic isn't it the colors are strong and they were all there they just couldn't see them by taking off the dirt by putting back those crucial losses that atmosphere that was hinted at in the church i think you've got back it's got depth uh more mysticism about it i love this light here on the back of judas i think that's really beautiful couldn't see that before but it's a lovely thing to work on actually very satisfying it's not exactly like the finished painting you know it's the first draft i think it's good it's not exactly the same as the other makes it much more likely to be before rather than after there's one remaining puzzle when this painting was sold at christie's in 1885 it was listed as signed and dated has rupert uncovered anything to solve that did you find a signature or a ghost of a signature well i think possibly yes if you look bottom slightly left of the center below the cloth on the tablecloth what looked to me like a date and then in front of that the remnants of four letters what do you think do you mind if i have a look i mean there is absolutely no doubt about it there is something there i have to if you hadn't pointed this out i would never have known this was there i just think this is just marks yes but they're different marks it's not in the same pigments as the drawing lines so if it's not a signature i don't know what it is but i mean the exciting thing is even if we can't entirely read it we know that the lost picture that we hope this to be was once signed lying a complete west signature over the fragmentary remaining signature i think it's a good fit fiona did you find out anything about the painting after conagi bought it gave it a good shot but i can't quite prove it ideally so after call nagy no we hit a bit of a dead end there so the provenance is still elusive i'm sorry i don't think we should be too glum an unfurling provenance that has every single name that is unbroken it's quite rare i mean we've got a lot i mean you've done very well there it's just not as tightly nailed down as i would like it and i know you're thrilled with this squiggle but it is still just a squiggle it's called the signature it's called the signature it's judgment time martin possill from the paul mellon center for studies in british art has been consulting with columbia university's professor alan staley author of the benjamin west catalog resume these are the people the art world trusts to authenticate a benjamin west they will be the ones to decide is this a benjamin west and have we found the missing sketch i have to say throughout the whole process of researching this picture i've kept on as we're getting what feels like messages of benjamin west's presence in the way that he uses his colors in the lines that that run throughout the composition but as much as i rate this unfortunately the decision is not mine and the people who the art world will listen to on this will not necessarily share my view [Music] martin very good to see you i know you and professor staley have been considering hugh's sketch yeah this is sorcerer oh put him out of his misery you're feeling pretty tense what conclusion have you come to well this it's a really interesting picture west's a really linear painter so even when he's using paint he's thinking about compositional lines and here you can see especially in this foreground in the figure of judas and the figures at the right there's little kind of compositional lines that run right the way through it it's absolutely feels like a benjamin west in every aspect fantastic isn't it yeah it's really fantastic it is i think you can relax on that score yeah we've conferred about it and we're both in agreement that this is absolutely right yeah i think having looked at the evidence the provenance you know we there aren't many gaps and that's important and i think this is the picture that was sold by sons in 1829 so after his death but but you know it was actually belonged to the family i think that's important so i also wonder whether it's the picture that west showed at the royal academy in 1804 all right it's had an interesting life yeah it's it's had a varied career it's good isn't it straight well it just shows also all those dark nights scrolling through ebay and look well find a painting uh nobody was interested in it and nobody bid against me and uh for you to do all the work and find out that it actually is original it's uh very fulfilling just nice what did you buy it for when he be 50 pounds oh yeah that breaks my heart so what do we think now philip he is one of the founding fathers of american painting as well as history painter to the king so i think you could probably add three zeros to 50 pounds i think it i think it's a 50 000 pound work of art that's good good news go and buy some more and i think it's a very handsome object in its own right so congratulations thank you thank you and i know this picture has been cleaned but now we know so much of the back story and we've had it all confirmed this little picture really seems to glow it does and hugh is certainly glowing after all that i can't help feeling sorry for the people who sold it to him for 50 pounds but you know somewhere it goes and he in amongst looking after sheep and cows he's still trawling through the internet for pictures so who knows you might see him vacuum one day 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] you

Channel: mightwenotbehappy

Views: 187,048

Keywords: art, restore, fiona Bruce, phillip mould, Benjamin West, religious, last supper, fake or fortune

Id: Mv6m8aHAtTM

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021