Displaying items by tag: fake or fortune

Art experts are searching for an eBay user that purchased a canvas for £3,000 in an online auction back in 2006. The painting, which depicts a couple eating oysters and drinking Champagne, was recently revealed to be an authentic work by the French Impressionist painter Édouard Vuillard. The canvas is estimated to be worth £250,000.

The discovery was made after experts on the BBC antiques program, Fake or Fortune, appraised a painting owned by a writer named Keith Tutt. Tutt had purchased the work, which was later revealed to be an authentic Vuillard painting, at an auction for a minimal amount. Robert Warren, the art dealer who sold the canvas to Tutt, stated that it had been one of a pair and that he had sold the other on eBay but could not remember who purchased it.

Fiona Bruce, co-host of Fake or Fortune, said, “We've done all the forensic and investigative work to prove it's genuine, now we just need to find the owner and tell them the good news. Someone, somewhere in the world is sitting on a fortune."

Three paintings left to the National Museum Wales in 1951 by notable Welsh collectors, Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, have been reclassified as authentic after spending decades in storage. In 1956 it was decided that that the paintings, Off Margate, Margate Jetty, and The Beacon Light, were either fake or not fully by the English Romanticist J.M.W. Turner’s (1775–1851) hand.

Turner experts have examined the paintings intermittently during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to similar ends. Thanks to today’s modern methods such as X-ray, infrared, and pigment analysis, the seascapes were finally vindicated. The process unfolded on the BBC program, “Fake or Fortune,” proving that the paintings’ materials were consistent with the materials notably used by Turner.  

Although the three paintings’ values have subsequently skyrocketed, they will remain in the National Museum’s collection. The Davies sisters who built one of the most important Impressionist and 20^th century art collections in Britain, bequeathed seven Turner paintings to the Museum in the early 1950s. All of the paintings will go on display together starting September 25^th.