FAKE OR FORTUNE REMBRANDT SE1EO4

the art world glamour wealth intrigue 95 selling at 95 million dollars beneath the surface there's a darker place a world of high stakes and Gamble's International art dealer Philip mold knows the risks he hunts down sleepers paintings that hide dark secrets in the past we looked at pictures now almost you can look through them paint or miss acts like blood at a crime scene I'm Fiona Bruce and I've over 20 years experience as a journalist every picture tells its own story and it's up to us to try and uncover it we're teaming up to investigate the human dramas and mysterious tales locked in paint it's a world that spans continents it can take you anywhere at any moment Essen 24 hours ago I was in London suddenly I had to drop everything and fly all the way down here to Cape Town in South Africa to pick up a painting that could be by one of the world's great masters by Rembrandt but whoever's painted it I do know it has a dark fascinating history this painting will bring us within touching distance of one of the greatest artists that ever lived it's a bit like a religious ritual and by which you anoint the picture it will require an investigation that reaches into the highest ranks of Nazi Germany this almost certainly released the force it stared at the picture and it will test our team to its limits this is getting so complicated [Music] this story began with an excited call from Philip I needed to see him at base quickly his head of research dr. Ben door Grosvenor was waiting and time was not on our side so while he got me in such a hurry the best way of explaining that is few to see the picture Bendel okay so this picture emerged a few days ago Ben door found it on the computer it's a picture coming up for sale in South Africa in Cape Town it looked interesting so we decided to look into it it looked like something that could be a very good spec as we say in the trade and the first thing that caught my eye is this looks like a period painting done almost 400 years ago but the estimate is only 800 pounds which is astonishingly cheap yeah fantastically cheap for a pretty good picture from the period the second thing that caught my eye is the guy's face I seem to remember I've seen it before somewhere so you just remembered the look of this chap yeah there's a bit of a portrait anorak I kind of try and remember faces as much as possible so I went through some old catalogues here is the same sitter I think in two paintings by Rembrandt himself so you're doing all this to try and show that that painting up for sale in South Africa is perhaps not just by a follower of Rembrandt but by Rembrandt himself is that the idea he could well be by Rembrandt but at the very least we're dealing with a painting that was painted in his circle or possibly in his studio and who knows maybe by the master himself so this is an interesting picture it's a picture of considerable quality but it was in the process of looking into it that a darker side emerged this painting was sold at auction in 1935 in Berlin and it came says here from the Van Diemen gallery the Van Diemen gallery belonged to the Oppenheimer's and the Oppenheimer's would choose forced to flee when the Nazis came to power and all of their stock was seized by the Nazis some placed on the administration of one of her rings right-hand men and sold at auction for a fraction of his value ah I'm beginning to get the idea so this painting that is up for sale in South Africa almost certainly is in fact a stolen painting stolen by the Nazis it's almost certainly what we call this foliated painting which is an effect stolen there's absolutely nothing to suggest in this stage at all that the people who are selling this know about it nor indeed to the auction house know about its history so how long have we got how long till this thing goes up for sale it's four o'clock now this pictures coming up when Bendel 24 hours right so we need to find some answers and fast is the picture in South Africa just a modern copy did it belong to the Oppenheimer's and I'm keen to find out more about them they owned the Van Diemen gallery that had the picture in the 30s living in Berlin at that time Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer would have witnessed the rise of Nazism a fare from Berlin in April 1933 they went to Paris I guess they thought they'd be safe there but in 1940 Hitler invaded France now Jakob died in Nice in 1941 Rose was sent to a concentration camp she died in Auschwitz in 1943 somehow their children survived so they do have living descendants who may have a claim on this painting well since the 1935 auction the Oppenheimer's pictures have been scattered all over the world but early in 2009 the descendants of the Oppenheimer's found three of those paintings and they were in a museum in California and the state of California has since decided to return those pictures to the Oppenheimer family and here's the Governor of California harmless water [ __ ] standing beside two of the descendants Peter block on the left and Inga Blackshear on the right at the ceremony where they returned two paintings but in this murky world the laws about returning paintings all restituted them as it's known differ from country to country if we're not going to get bogged down in the legalities I need some advice the next morning I visit Ann Weber of the looted Art Commission in London you would think that things that were stolen if everybody's agreed that they were taken under terrible circumstances you should be able to get them back wherever they are but no the justice that you get depends on the accident of geography really the accident of where the work of art has come to rest in this case we know that there is a lawyer who represents the Oppenheimer family she's a French lawyer living in Paris or working from Paris and the right thing to do is to contact her ask her is this painting on your list of missing paintings and then to see what she would like to do about it back at base were sending the limited information we have on the painting ODEs the lawyer in Paris we can't stop the auction ourselves we have no claim on the painting and with only five hours left to bidding starts we need to know which is able to stop the sale a bottle pure parle avec Eva stud Seng my guess is in this stage the diva stuff Singh is busy looking into her records she's only had the details for about a half an hour so I can hardly expect her to come up with an immediate answer and I bet you should be surprised hello is that Eva stud Singh hi this is phillip mold speaking how are you have you managed to receive the information that I've sent you as I understand it there is no guarantee far from it that the auction house will withdraw this picture this is all a bit of a gamble raising questions over the paintings past could my written lengthy legal disputes the owner may dispose of the picture secretly so it just disappears from sight it's still showing it for sale but sometimes these things move quite slowly I wouldn't like to be told that my picture was in fact Nazi booty would you but what I'm finding rather frustrating is you and I know that this picture is considerably more interesting than it appears on the screen I still want to get my hands it's frustrating to wait knowing there's nothing more we can do hi do you have some news I'll come soon so the lawyers letter has clearly had that effect mustard on they didn't give any reasons they just said something about an ownership dispute which happened in the last few minutes [Music] thankfully we've managed to stop the auction now two questions need answering I'm desperate to discover who painted the picture could it be by Rembrandt and I want to know who the rightful owner is to investigate we need more than a computer image we need the painting itself so one overnight flight later Here I am in Cape Town I've been given permission to take the picture temporarily for testing in Europe and while I'm here I can find out more about the painting and its owner from the auctioneer charles run exciting I'm the first one well I have to say when I saw it on the computer back in London I was expecting something smaller and actually not as vivid as this yes I was worried that I might be slightly unimpressed by but actually I think it's yes I think I think it's got a lot of pathos and I think there's a lot of feeling in it you know as as a painting so just tell me how you came by then how this painting came to your attention a couple of years and he did take about four his paintings to another auction house and two of those paintings were unsold at that auction and this was one of them this was one and is it because he'd failed to sell it before we could put it on a quite a low price yes he he didn't want the painting back and he didn't want them to handle the resale of the painting so I gave it to us and we came to an agreement well let's put it what we considered a fair estimate to draw some interest which was in Sterling it wasn't about just about under I'd very much like to meet the owner when I'm here is that gonna be possible I have asked him whether he would like to attend today but unfortunately he didn't - and how did he come by the painting he inherited yes now we did know that the owner Tita Shari Harriet at this painting in 1978 and this is written by his father bequeath as a gift to my son the other thing was the same interest that's the first thing I noticed when you turned around what we're not sure it looks like a sort of freshest leg it does if it of being in some storage warehouse somewhere now that is a bit chilling that isn't it Phil if it's Leona um well I have it in front of me which is very exciting it's much more it's much richer it's much more colorful it's much more interesting as a painting to to my uneducated I now seeing it in real life are there any obvious things I should be looking at before we wrap it up do you think well it's fifty one fifty fifty and a half and then hang on Charles it very helpfully measuring here by 38 and you were thinking that's good enough is it okay anything else it does have a gold frame yeah well how old did you understand this picture this I think this frame may be from the 70 60 70s I didn't know he thinks there might be even the sixties or seventies the present owner may not want to meet me but still it's a good sign that he's willing to entrust the painting to us to undergo investigation well here it is yikes I'm pretty terrified actually about taking this on a plane back overnight but apparently the guy who brought it to the auction house in the first place who owns it at the moment brought it along the skeleton coast of Namibia bouncing around the back of his Land Rover so who knows hopefully I won't do too bad a job in Paris the Oppenheimer's lawyer can give us more information about the possible ownership of the painting Eva Sturt Singh has spent many years battling to find and return the Oppenheimer collection two years after they fled Germany their van diemen gallery was put into liquidation by the Nazis the pictures were sold at knockdown prices or what's been called nude an auction or Jewish auctions thanks to the Nazis the paintings including masterpieces by Titian Van Dyck and Rubens passed into new hands very rarely known artists and they had very fine paintings and then see is these auctions which you call you denoxin and this one they sold all these paintings I have caught this in my catalogs they put in little little oza red stickers like this and only meet yet without limit yeah that's why you call it slowed down - Lloyd on you saw it on the market because in the end you could buy you could buy something for one month that fan was constituted a long time ago having spent so many years working to restitute the oppenheimer estate to its rightful heirs ava has grown to know descendants Peter block and Inga Blackshear as friends she's all too aware of how important regaining their inheritance is to them and to others like them I know them since such a long time and I know how it is important because the Jews were persecuted in Germany and persecution means everything and I saw it with them in California it is very good for them the is they feel like having been that it registers recognized the persecution with a picture now withdrawn from the Cape Town sale and on its way back to London Ava is keen to reunite her clients with a painting taken in such terrible circumstances whenever you steal something from somebody you are only satisfied once the thief is in prison or you get it back your property and I'm a little like a detective when I find something it is it is also fun to chase art isn't it [Music] as funeral rise back from Cape Town on the red-eye I'll be able to get a better idea whether the painting really is without doubt the looted picture and not a cheap modern copy I know was terrified to hang us on the plane I always get this you know this this rather sort of uncertain feeling at the stage when it pictures opened here in London you know it's come from another part of the world always looks different somehow in the London light don't let to know what you make of it I mean there's no getting away from the fact that he still looks like a grumpy old chap standing there but it's got a depth that you know hadn't appreciate until I saw it the moment of truth approaches there we go yeah are you ready what do you think that looks interesting I have to say I do think that it's a period work it's got that sort of nulled intensity that you associate with Rembrandt at his circle and this looks like a wonderful accuse of oak possibly Baltic oh just the sort of thing that one would be looking for for a 17th century picture I think there's a possibility that we can find out who this is by but the real thing is is it the picture that we think it is oppenheimer picture you know what we could do we could put some white Spurs on it and I don't think we'd damage the picture in so doing but white spirit takes off paint yeah what it can do but not old solid varnish like this and what's more I'm not gonna do it you're gonna do it for me you want me to put this white spirit on this painting for over and brown hundreds years old are you sure remember this is white spirit it's not acetone it doesn't actually take off the bar or live dangerously like that that's oh look at the Drake the shadow underneath the drapery how the drapery comes from a window now actually I can see that is amazing isn't that much better it's a bit like water when it goes over pebbles and the dirty picture like this you can get a hint a taste of what it might be when it's clean although I wouldn't advise anyone else trying this for a minute or two while it's wet the old varnish becomes transparent allowing the depth of the painting to shine through well you haven't got long it's gonna evaporate off so you just got to look at that look at that picture now it's like I said fish coming out of the water isn't it I mean you can see that it's a work of some quality and definitely has the feel of an early painting this painting is definitely holding a lot of Secrets but so often in this world the back of a picture can tell you more than the front well that looks like an 18th century wax collector seal so that that tells us almost certainly that this isn't a modern flick the panel looks right for the period it's been chamfered in the right way we've got the three quarters here and they make this incision into the edge so you can frame it properly there's also some writing on the friend here this looks like a German script doesn't it oh yeah this is deep deep in or something there been some wonderful moments when we looked in the back of pictures just as we begin to think we've got some missing answer we work out the words it's something like hang two left at the door they come on then door what about this I've got me excited well this one is it's not very easily easily discernible at the moment I mean if it was a whopping great big swastika we we'd know more about sort of fishes to hear about it does and you're right because this little thing in the middle this little bundle of sticks tied together as a fest case and that was what the the early fascists used as a symbol that's where they get the term fascist from one always has that element of uncertainty before a picture arrives that you've only known from digital images it's now here we've seen it and it's unquestionably old just how old is something that we need to determine and it seems to have all the evidence to suggest that it is the Oppenheimer's picture and to me is covered with fingerprints we just need to sort of read them [Music] the next place I want to go is here the wit library this is the scotland yard of the art world with images and information on over a million pictures it was here that bend will discovered the link between our picture and the Van Diemen sale I want Fiona to see that evidence for herself to do this right lead on in these files are just so many answers I mean it's a bit like you know with crime scenes you know you have to library all the evidence library the DNA and then using it later on you can establish things any picture that has been in a public collection or auction with a dealer over the last getting on for a hundred years the chances are you can find it here staggering really self portraits old testament genes trace his father and his brother how do you this is a fantastic resource I once found a missing link here that proved a lackluster landscape was really a Gainsborough how many images there are just for the father and they're all his dad well it could be anybody it could be anybody probably a studio model well it's definitely our chance this is russain guys yeah yeah not so painting mister maybe over the set of the eyes in the shape of the nose and that's slightly sort of how long am I gonna have to sit for model look you know and Rembrandt would have chosen this chap to paint because he had an interesting face I kind of lived in face yeah that one yes absolutely I mean Rembrandt was always looking for different types of human expression thought and insight and if you found a good face it stuck with it good face is worth having yeah I'm looking at so many that I'll see Mike actually move what are looks like thing oh here it is right okay let's talk about the criminais ting evidence this is what Ben diamond graph of Berlin 26th 29th of April 1930 in his next door picture comes up in South Africa we here in the Witte Library in London photograph ancient information put it all together it's like a kind of trail of clues yeah although we know that the painting that was for sale in Cape Town is definitely the Nazi painting there are still many questions to answer hang on a minute though because this says Rembrandt and yet the picture in Cape Town is described as being by a follower of Rembrandt so how can you tell the difference where you've asking an absolutely crucial question is the difference between the master and a follower or an assistant but I tell you what there's only short walk away we get to the National Gallery there you can see some real rain brothers [Music] Rembrandt was the greatest Dutch artist of the 17th century a time when Dutch painting was the envy of Europe but while many of his contemporaries excelled in landscapes that still lives Rembrandt became famous as a master of the human face the National Gallery holds a wonderful collection of his portraits now even I recognize this self-portrait two things sort of jumped out at me he's not flattering himself obviously is he and also he looks either slightly querulous or very slightly anxious I'm not quite sure which it is but you can see that in his expression can't you absolutely see that's exactly what makes this a fascinating picture it's not obvious it's not someone laughing or someone sad or someone angry it teeters on the edge one feeling teetering into the other is just incredibly clever you can tell a Rembrandt portrait by the superior way he portrays a subjects character and emotion with nothing more than inspired brushstrokes there's no vagueness in a Rembrandt I read that Hitler was a great fan of Rembrandt's which is surprising in one sense in that you know Rembrandt mixed with a lot of Jewish people he painted quite a few Jewish people as well I mean why do you think Hitler was such a fan because Rembrandt is the ultimate trophy I mean Rembrandt is a byword for artistic genius and what he wanted was these these bits of booty himself around him as a form of aggrandizement take a look at this view it's it's got no label on it right tell me what you think of this what in terms of is it a Rembrandt honest quality yeah I don't know well okay from what I've learned from the master could make a complete fool of myself now I would say it's not as fine as as the ones we've seen I mean even theirs those are not photographic in the way they portray the faces they are very clear you now get something that this is a Rembrandt on you what I'm saying it doesn't particularly look like a Rembrandt I can reveal to you that is not around oh but it was thought to be Rembrandt oh right okay and it was demoted in the 1960s but it's very difficult cuz you can't just go and say well it's got the right paint and it's from the right period and this is the sort of subject he does they're these subtle differences in the quality of the handwriting as it were if it was originally thought that this was a Rembrandt it's possible is it that this came from the studio of Rembrandt you know from one of his pupils there is it yeah I mean he had around him a group of people assistants pupils if you want the people who would actually as he worked on a picture quite often sit around and do the same model the same objects a Rembrandt could do it from one angle and then two or three other people could do it from other angles so he had this sort of industry going on these are his apprentices effectively as apprentices pupils yes and these were people who could also supply pictures which he could sell this and you could get a copy of a round Brown or you could get an original Reverend [Music] with Philip eager to start work on uncovering the mysteries of our painting I want to learn more about just how art was systematically looted by the Nazis in the years before the Second World War [Music] as well as housing an impressive array of machines to excite the imagination of any schoolboy the Imperial War Museum holds a wealth of rare archive film that documents the rise of Nazism from the days before our painting was looted archive that historian James Taylor has arranged to show me this is a crowd listening to the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels who is announcing a one-day boycott of Jewish shops throughout the country and the intention was that this would stop non Jewish people buying from Jewish shopkeepers well end of March 1933 March 31st to be specific so this has only been two months since I love Hitler's become Chancellor Wow do you waste any time no absolutely not and this is the beginning of the kind of greeting an increasing legislation against the Jews it certainly became more powerful yes I mean I think the key is already 1935 when the rules the rice citizenship law is brought in and that effectively makes Jews second-class citizens and then they turn their attention wholesale to the possessions of Jews the focus of Nazi anti-semitic laws to force Jews to emigrate the irony of that is that they actually put obstacles in their path one of which was that they weren't allowed to take their assets with them so they insisted that all Jewish artworks shares and bonds be declared and it was either taken forcibly or after the Jews were deported then that's when the property was taken of course not all Jews were as wealthy as Yaakov and Rosa Oppenheimer with the funds to buy expensive paintings but it's estimated that by the end of the war one-third of all the world's art treasures had been looted by the Nazis paintings by da Vinci raphae on others adorned the walls of the Nazi leaders when it came to art were there Nazis who were particularly interested in it per se well Goering most famously is the person who was interested in art Hitler of course when the water cameras that's right and he wanted to establish certainly kind of Fuhrer Museum but I think it's also worth pointing out that they were very particular about the type of art that they wanted and anything that was they considered degenerate which was generally speaking modernist art was was destroyed I think it's fascinating and horrifying an equal measure to see quite how systematically the Nazis stripped away everything from the Jews that made them human really and what I hadn't realized that the Nazis were so keen to force the Jews to emigrate I didn't realize that was part of their master plan of course the Oppenheimer's in 33 left Germany they did emigrate they had to leave everything behind including their painting a painting bender has news of back at base well and whether from the Luke Dalton Europe has been in touch and she and her team make the most fantastic discovery our picture was listed by the Nazis in 1934 as a work of national treasure which meant that it couldn't be exported from the country and Ann and her team that sily sent us a copy of the list from a few years later in 1938 here it is it's the second picture down artist Rembrandt on the left and then the build nests sign as partners in fantasy a defect means basically portrayed with the father in fancy dress and you can see all these pictures art by Rembrandt this is extraordinary I'm just trying to keep up with what this meet they thought it was a Rembrandt and therefore as a Rembrandt was national importance to the Heritage even more than that I mean this puts a whole different historical slant it moves from will be an important Oh master picture in their view to a national treasure I mean whatever the picture is what whatever we can look at as now whoever painted this this was in its day something of supreme importance obviously in their day they were pretty convinced it was my friend but otherwise they wouldn't catalogued as a national treasure I see it yes so we really do need to find out who it's by if we can find out who painted our picture then we can also get closer to a fair valuation for its owners so I've come to Amsterdam where Rembrandt lived from 1630 9 onwards so why am I here in Amsterdam I'm here to see probably the greatest Rembrandt connoisseur of our times Ernst Pandava Toni was chairman of the Rembrandt research project he knows more about Rembrandt than anybody else alive if he says you'll unknown 17th century canvasses by Rembrandt it could be worth twenty-five billion pounds let's say if not just a few thousand dollars this man has got the power of a Roman Emperor [Music] so here it is Ernst has so much knowledge and experience he may well be able to give an instant opinion the first response is that it is 17th century painting but if the question is is the painting made by Rembrandt the answer is no because it's not signed it's as simple as that it is very simple but the technique is is similar very similar and judging from the technique it must have been done in his studio and he must have seen in this painting each studio had his own paint recipes I wouldn't say there there were buckets of paint where they all picked from paper but in his reminyl school they used the same matter and the behavior of the matter was comparable some some of it flows easily other paint sort of drags over the surface and and behaves in this in a specific way so what I see here you could also see on a on a ramrods so the painting is not by Rembrandt but it's definitely connected to the great man with the help of Ernst and the team he works with we can still find out who painted this picture applying state-of-the-art techniques step by step they can delve deeper and deeper into the creation of our painting I think the best is we start with the head and from there we can orient ourselves more easily an infrared camera would allow us to look beneath the surface of the painting and see the artists preparation known as the reserve there is an around the feather you'll see the shape making a reserve for a wider feather than you see now on the painting and this is most probably it changed in the conception of the painting and it's really it's like a poet missing a line and then adding yes yes yes but look at this hat I mean this hat was once enormous I mean look at the edge there I mean it looks like one of those great big fluffy Rembrandt hats or I mean the turban you would expect a turban whenever he gets a very small cap but it may have been a different shape originally said what we're seeing is an artist trying to find an artistic solution yes in other words an original painting and not a copy yes we can be sure about that already our picture is revealing its past it shows an artist changing his mind whilst painting so it's an original work a copy of course would not have these telltale signs beneath the surface but we need more investigation to find out who it's actually by so it's now in the expert hands of Martin Bale who's a restorer extraordinaire I'm intrigued by a series of faint marks at the bottom of the picture could it be a signature his trained eye might just be able to find it if it exists it could reveal what were eager to know now Martin I've got to ask you can you make out anything in the pin in the bottom left-hand corner is there a possible signature I just had a first look at it and it ends with a date 16:39 or 1635 but then before this date something is written and that's partly over-painted mm-hmm that suggests that somebody painted over a signature without knowing what he did he didn't even paint over everything because one or two centimetres before there's also remains of a signature which is not retouched so there is more and I think they only can come further first by looking through a microscope because the open paintings are too thick and too opaque it's a bit of a muddle isn't it yeah yeah that's why restorers like to clean this kind of picture because you want to reveal these problems the Amsterdam experts will continue their investigations confident that we can put a name to its creator [Music] this compelling and it is compelling process of attribution that's going on all around me is central to our world I mean it's a bit like a religious ritual by which the the painting gets anointed it's only by knowing when something was painted or best of all who painted it that art historians have got something to grab onto to hold on to and people who buy pictures will take out checks and sign them when they've got that it's riveting the picture itself hasn't changed physically at all but already it's growing in stature from the follower of Rembrandt that was at auction for just a thousand pounds [Music] with the painting yielding more and more secrets to Philip I'm keen to uncover just how far Nazi looting spread when Europe was liberated after the war Goering 's personal stash of looted art was discovered a multi-million pound haul that read like a who's who of the Great's of the art world but we barely found the tip of the iceberg so much was stolen that it's estimated that art worth up to twenty billion pounds remains missing and the Nazis stole art not just from the Jews but from anyone they considered to be an enemy of the state Adam zamorski is trying to locate items taken from his polish grandmother's art gallery he wants to recover them to create a public museum for Poland to be proud of the Nazis behaved completely differently in Poland to the way they behaved anywhere else in Belgium or France or or anywhere else they were determined to destroy the Polish upper classes and intelligence anyway but they also confiscated everything all Polish property was was simply liable to confiscation and so the Germans started sending these things to different places because they had their great plans for you know the Fuhrer's museum in minutes and then Goering took a few and the frightful governor of Poland Hans Frank had in his bedroom Matt Raphael so this was in your family museum affecting that's right and then artists took it yeah it's thought to be a self portrait by Raphael and disappeared without a trace and this is all you've got so black and white exactly image and even though I do I don't know it's been every single lead has been chased up and it's probably the most valuable looted object still out there really I'm young so several million so imagine yeah hundreds of millions I mean you know I mean there wouldn't be a museum and in the Western world that wouldn't you know do anything to get hurt you're almost to have it I see it as a personal duty to try and reconstitute these collections and to make them available because it was put together by ancestors whom I actually rather admire and who I'm sort of quite fond of but also and I'd see it as a bit more missed a sort of moral duty to the people of Poland in Amsterdam I'm hoping that pigment expert Karen Gruen will be able to get closer to an attribution is that a signature in the bottom left-hand corner under her microscopic scrutiny a dark secret begins to emerge I started with these largely retouching zin what could be a signature but then when you move on one can see that also what could be number six was mentioned and a three yes I've always assumed that was the day yeah but they seemed to have been made in paint used for retouching so later so what you're telling me is your microscope tells you that the whole signature is added the whole date everything yeah that sounds like a rather yeah it's inclusion that does it disappoint I'd love to have a look down the lens myself am and I don't disbelieve you for a moment bang in the middle here Oh crikey I see what you mean I've seen this so many times before but not quite as graphically as this there's a sort of smeary dishonest layer above isn't there yeah above what it looks really different really different and then use and then and then as I pass it along to where the date is the date is the same smeary paint hmm there's no signature here at all is there really or no evidence of one no so any hopes of identifying the painting by signature have found it it was added later maybe in the 19th century possibly in an effort to pass it off as a Rembrandt it's great they were finding out more and more about the painting now but my research has thrown up a disturbing new revelation which is there is a second claim on this picture now we knew already the Oppenheimer's they ran the Van Diemen gallery it was liquidated by the Nazis but the painting then passed to a bank as part repayment of a loan that had been made earlier to the Oppenheimer's now that bank was Jewish and its assets were then seized by the Nazis and among those assets was our painting Bank no longer exists but its heirs are saying that they too now have a claim on our picture it's a very confusing situation who owns this picture and how commonly to situations like this occur with claim and counterclaim I've called in an Weber from the looted Art Commission if a painting say belong to an art dealer then the art dealers in Germany were put under enormous pressure by the Nazis from the moment they came to power I really buy the 1935 Jewish art dealers weren't allowed to practice in Germany so you might have a situation where a an art dealer took out a loan from a bank and then the collateral for that loan might have been works of art and then the loan is called in because they Artie don't even put under so much pressure the loan is called in so the artworks go to the bank the bank itself may have been Jewish owned and then subsequently that bank may have been seized by the Nazis or liquidated or Aaron eyes taken over and that painting at that point belonged to the bank and it was then seized from them and in over sixty seventy years it might be lost in the mists of time who was the rightful owner and because there were so many waves of dispossession by the night says you really have to unpick all that and unravel all these different discriminatory measures that were taken to try and on son who exactly was the owner of a painting so yes you could have a situation where two different owner people believe themselves to be the owner for good for good reason back in Amsterdam were reaching the final stages of our forensic research and the last step is often the most revealing an x-ray image of our painting shows the artists original sketch the contrast between his first sketch and the finished painting may take us closer to understanding just who that artist was the technique is very similar to to what we know from Brembo except that Randolph was more outspoken you see the contrast much stronger this is paint rather meek it's very carefully done a sort of cowardly Rembrandt but but someone who knows Rembrandt nonetheless yes I wouldn't say coward but insecure a young boy of Miss a 17 or 18 years who works in his style sound as though you're homing in yes the team have completed their studies now it's up to Ernst to try and put it all together and tell us just who this painting is bye [Music] my personal opinion is that the painting is very close to is a true real executive in the pupil of is exude reveal was a people of Rembrandt's from say already maybe the 27 16 27 28 29 one should always be careful here the name of euroval may cover two or three young men you see I mean the the pupils of emerald do not have a very stamped style of their own and so they there may be different individuals which we have made into one individual because there is enough connection from one painting to the other and so we call them do reveal once we focus in on the master what is not by him is treated less exact as realm of himself so when I say it's it's you reveal it comes close to a number of paintings which we attribute at this moment to Chu revealed we have a result the committee has decided not only we established that this is now one on the same picture that was spall ei t'adore four so by the Nazis in the 1930s but we now have a firm attribution a picture that was formerly called follower of Rembrandt it frankly means nothing is now by Isaac to your de Ville the orphan pupil of Rembrandt himself is now from his time by a firm name the emperor has spoken with our attribution work finished we'll have to return the painting to Rudd's auction house in Cape Town but first it's back to London to tell the others the news with this new information I reckon the painting which we find for sale for just a thousand pounds is now worth closer to twenty thousand but who was I so do de ville well he's probably best known for being one of Rembrandt's very first pupils and in fact I've got a a painting here which is thought to be one of his early self-portraits and he joined Rembrandt studio as an apprentice when he was about 16 years old in 1629 and for that privilege he would have had to pay rent rent about hundred Dutch guilders every year we know all this information by the way because of tio2 vote was an orphan and we have copies of all the receipts between Rembrandt and the order those Guardians as an apprentice he would have been in the studio doing everything from mixing paints to actually learning how to paint and draw actually not paying a lot attention to his hair not know he mean it pretty cool for the 1630s I think now when you were in the studio the way you learnt your trade was effectively girl making copies of the Masters work this is thought to be by the author bill and here Ren brands which T order bill copied and the sharp-eyed of you will notice that there's no dog into your the bills picture and that's because of Rembrandt yeah that's because Rembrandt added his later after the auto bill made the copy now I hope you'll also seem that the pose in this copy made by Orville is exactly the same as that of our picture so what we've got here is not only an important discovery of a new picture by to your to bill but a fascinating piece of evidence as to how Rembrandt studio system worked you could imagine that the author bill is in the studio and when Rembrandt is using this model for his own paintings the author bills in the corner doing his own pictures himself said that would affect the value of our painting it almost said I mean it's not a Rembrandt but an attribution is a very important thing it's like waving a magic wand over a picture it turns from the anonymous to the identifiable this is all very exciting but I'm afraid I had to throw a bit the spanner in the works because there is a counterclaim to this painting a Jewish family who owned a bank at the time of the Second World War they lent money to the Oppenheimer family back in the 30s and they are now claiming this painting among others as collateral for that loan slowly this is getting more and more complicated it might be the whole thing might be academic I mean the owner might not be prepared to relinquish hold of the picture might what I hang on to it in which case no one else gonna love it in which case no one can but you know we've got to get back to Cape Town we've got to return the picture I've spoken to the owner Peter sherry all right and he's agreed to meet us so why not of that meeting try and establish what he has in mind whatever mr. schary decides the new claim is likely to prolong the ownership dispute so it's back to Cape Town to return the painting to the auction house and a chance for us to meet the mysterious mr. schary beautiful sunny Cape Town you've indicated before that I have them I must say I absolutely adore it and just over there is where our whole story began in ruts auctioneers what a journey that paintings been on now we're gonna meet Peter sherry who owns this painting you spoke to him what's it like I had a brief chat with him on the phone from Namibia whose brother crackling lie but it sounds like a very reasonable guy now I'm wondering you know given that this painting was sold in the van diemen say you know are there Nazi antecedents in his past and his family is that how he got hold of me I'm fascinated for the Union can ask you know what you don't want to I don't mind I'll ask it we've already sent mr. schary news of what we've been able to find out about the paintings place in art history so what can he tell us about the man who owned it his grandfather hello mr. schary you know Bruce very nice to meet you hello there hi Phillip mold very nice to meet you having spoken on the phone yeah thank you very much for coming huge pleasure I can't father wasn't Berlin in the 20s and 30s he was a lawyer he was away influential men so if your grandfather was a lawyer before the war what do you do during the war I remember he had a uniform but he was not in the war was your grandfather are not saying that's what I'm getting my grandfather okay I would say no because like I said he was a businessman he was lucky in business and in private I think he had enough funds in his life to put a pictures in his house in Johannesburg when I was my goodness I was 13 13 14 you know there was of consults and there was FMEA a France house under Vermeer defamation by your grandfather yeah we trace his picture back which is what piqued our interest wasn't he back to 1935 the Van Diemen sale which of course was a sale of years of much much art they've been kind of appropriated for him from Judy's videos and then so did your grandfather not buy it from that sale no no my grandfather surely couldn't have bought it knowingly that it was somebody else's you know for that he had too high standing he couldn't do that for himself and he wouldn't have done it because it was a very generous person all his life I suppose the question now is is what are you gonna do with it would you give you a feeling of satisfaction to see the picture returned in some way to its rightful owners who sent I have no problem was that I inherited only I didn't buy it I was given it as part of inherited of my mother I had the benefit of looking at it enjoying it if it belongs to somebody else that's person should have it you know so even though the painting is worth 20,000 pounds 20 times more than he thought mr. schary is still willing to give it up that's what we've been hoping for since the day we stopped the auction we've come a long way since then but sadly the chaos left by the Nazis has foiled our attempts to return the painting to its rightful owner for now until an agreement can be reached this painting like so many others that were taken in terrible circumstances will remain locked in limbo [Music] the thing is when this all started it was an unwanted portrait you know for sale at a knockdown price we've come a long way since then I mean we've worked out the story of the gallery owners the pictures dark Nazi past and of course who painted it Isaac - yah - he'll do pull of one of the greatest artists the world's ever seen now it can claim to be within the wider world of Rembrandt and actually it's a 300 year old witness to the great man himself it can live and breathe again in this series we've looked beyond pictures into their hidden secrets that is very exciting we found paintings that have a past sometimes thrilling we've been looking at us all the time so that was win the painting sometimes dark all art tells a story and it's through these stories the paintings come to life [Music] [Applause] [Music] an Antiques Roadshow returns to BBC one next week at 7:15 we're in the auction houses uncovering what makes the world's most expensive paintings in an hour and John Craven and team are revisiting some of Britain's best-loved jewels in Countryfile next [Music]

Channel: mightwenotbehappy

Views: 367,089

Keywords: REMBRANDT, FAKE OR FORTUNE, BBC

Id: YQFWdpgIcPY

Length: 58min 56sec (3536 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 09 2018