Fake or Fortune?

As I grow older, I seem to spend more time reading art history and criticism and books about archaeology.  Both of these fields are immense and variegated and, perhaps, due to old age, I don't really seem to retain much of what I read -- therefore, I have the pleasure of reading about the same interesting paintings and ruins time and time again.  Further, these subjects are so intricate that I don't feel as if I have done more than scratch the surface -- but this is fine with me:  I don't have any real personal or professional need to excel in these studies and can read for pleasure alone.

The British TV show Fake or Fortune? is available on Netflix.  Four episodes constituting the entirety of Series 4 (2014) can be streamed from that service.  In fact, there are seven complete series in the British Broadcasting vaults (although only 2014 is available on Netflix) with four 2018 programs on tap at the BBC.  I hope that more of these shows are broadcast on Netflix.  On the evidence of the 2014 series, the show is fantastically interesting and, indeed, addictive.  Art dealer Philip Mould and his sidekick, Fiona Davis (a BBC journalist) are presented each program with works of questionable provenance -- if the paintings are proven to come from the hand of Renoir or some other noteworthy artist, the canvas will be worth several hundred-thousand pounds.  If the painting is fake, or more importantly provenance can't be reliable (and, in the art world, indisputably) established, then the pictures are worth next to nothing.  Often, the owners of the putatively significant paintings have something at stake -- a family legend must be verified or the paintings must receive maximum money at auction to save a deteriorating castle or pay the inheritance taxes on a farm in France.  The show is genuinely suspenseful, primarily because the presenters fail in demonstrating provenance about as often as they succeed -- their batting average seems to be about 50 %.  Works of art are inherently fascinating and the program delves in detail into the techniques used by artists to make their works:  we learn about different types of canvas, secret marks hidden beneath the paint, various types of varnishes, and the chemical constituency of pigments both ancient and modern.  Canvases are cleaned and x-rayed and subjected to all sorts of different techniques of analysis to show how the picture was made, what it was made of, and with what instruments it was painted.  Mould is a connoisseur and so he applies his practiced eye to the stylistic and color elements of the painting.  Fiona Davis does leg-work, tracking down witnesses and interviewing them or locating European and English experts to obtain their opinions.  Sometimes, the two presenters go to the exact places where landscapes were painted and compare the modern vista with what is shown on the canvas.  Various colorful art dealers and, even, rogues (fakers) are available to provide their opinions.  A third member of the team is Dr. Bendor Grosvernor -- equipped with an Apple laptop, he surfs the web to find internet references to the painters and their work:  his most important tool is a website run by Sotheby's that purports to capture every sale made in the art market during the past eighty years.  Often the history of the people who once owned the paintings is as interesting as the paintings themselves -- we are introduced to a gallery of British aristocrats, politicians (including Churchill), and eccentrics.  Each of the paintings studied poses genuine mysteries and there are even villains aplenty in the show -- in the cases of well-known artists, usually there are catalogues raisonne (indeed, sometimes competing catalogues) and, often, the inquiries by our intrepid hosts stir up dark clouds of professional jealousy and envy -- it seems that those who have made catalogues raisonne are intensely protective of their work and fiercely oppose attempts to add new paintings to their books -- to approve a new painting for admission to the catalogue seems viewed as an admission of failure by the art historian compiling the work.  In several cases, in fact, paintings were rejected as authentic by the editors of the relevant catalogue raisonne notwithstanding what seemed to me like virtually irrefutable, albeit circumstantial, evidence of authenticity. 

Fake of Fortune? has just the right mixture of British professorial attitude, continental arrogance, human interest, and good-old-fashioned detective work to delight most viewers.  Indeed, the show has been very popular on the BBC and I hope that more episodes will soon become available in the United States.