An art program on British television recently unveiled two new additions to the oeuvre of renowned British painter Thomas Gainsborough.
The BBC One program “Fake or Fortune?” has produced a landscape and a portrait painting now considered to be works by Thomas Gainsborough. The show’s art experts, Philip Mould and Bendor Grosvenor, as well as Hugh Belsey, editor of a forthcoming Gainsborough catalogue raisonné, agree on the attributions.
Thomas Gainsborough, “Joseph Gape,” oil on canvas, 24 7/16 x 21 1/2 in. St. Albans Museums
Both paintings were located on the BBC Your Paintings website and neither carried a firm attribution before their “discovery” on television. The portrait of “Joseph Gape” is now considered to be a Gainsborough, while the landscape shows Gainsborough’s hand as well as that of a 19th-century English follower.
Philip Mould and Fiona Bruce discuss Gainsborough’s methods for constructing landscape works. Source – BBC News / BBC Sport / bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC
“Fake or Fortune?” joins gallery owner and Old Master paintings expert Philip Mould, his associate, art historian and Van Dyck specialist Bendor Grosvenor, with host Fiona Bruce of the widely popular “Antiques Roadshow.” The program has just finished its third season of four episodes, having added the Gainsborough victories to other confirmed authentications of Degas, Van Dyck, Turner, Vuillard, and Constable paintings.
