Fake or Fortune?
Journalist Fiona Bruce teams up with art expert Philip Mould to investigate the provenance or attribution of notable artworks.
Series 5
The team investigates paintings and sculpture linked to Delaroche, Lucian Freud and Rodin, alongside difficult portrait attributions. Questions of family ownership, incomplete records and deliberate deception complicate the search for firm answers.
1. Freud
0.0Jul 17, 2016 · 59 minThe team investigates a portrait believed to be an early work by Lucian Freud, despite the artist having denied painting it during his lifetime. Research leads back to Freud’s teenage years at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, while technical analysis examines whether he may have worked over an abandoned canvas begun by someone else.
2. Delaroche
0.0Jul 24, 2016 · 59 minA painting bought for £500 is investigated as the possible lost royal commission Saint Amelia, Queen of Hungary by Paul Delaroche. Fiona and Philip trace it from the exiled French royal family to Britain and use archival and scientific evidence to distinguish the original work from the many contemporary copies made after it.
3. Rodin
0.0Jul 31, 2016 · 59 minA family-owned watercolour is said to belong to Auguste Rodin’s celebrated series of Cambodian dancers. With little documented provenance and the shadow of prolific Rodin forger Ernest Durig hanging over the work, the team studies its materials, signature and fluid painting technique in search of a reliable attribution.
4. Portraits
0.0Aug 21, 2016 · 59 minThree unrelated portraits are investigated as possible works by Philip Mercier, Adolph von Menzel and Willem de Kooning. The cases produce sharply different outcomes, ranging from a neglected bargain to a convincing forgery and a promising attribution complicated by unresolved ownership history.