Degas and the Little Dancer Fake or Fortune?

£18,500,000... £19,000,000 and £4,000,000...

The art world, a place of outrageous fortune.

95, selling at 95,000,000.

But beneath the surface lurks danger.

I probably turned out about 200 fakes over a six, seven year period.

You're committing fraud on a grand scale.

International art dealer Philip Mould uncovers sleepers,

pictures with a secret past.

Now he's bringing his detective skills to solve more mysteries locked in paint.

In the past we looked at pictures,

now almost you can look through them.

I'm Fiona Bruce. As a journalist I'm used to hunting for facts.

We're teaming up for a new series of investigations.

This case will be one of the most challenging we've ever faced

as we try and prove that this little dancer

was painted by one of the world's most famous artists.

Our investigation takes us from the ballet in Paris...

That's it, isn't it? I mean, that is it.

To Germany, and the biggest forgery scandal of modern times.

When these paintings were thought to be genuine,

how much were they worth?

Millions.

With cutting-edge science and new research,

can we persuade the world's experts to accept it as a genuine work?

If it is a fake, it's a very good one.

This is, I think, on a knife edge.

Mayfair, London.

Where the very well-heeled come in search of jewellery,

fashion and fine art.

Fancy a bit of window shopping?

I wouldn't say no.

Many a multi-million pound deal has taken place behind these doors.

So what do you think of that dreamy little Monet?

That could look rather tasty above your fireplace.

Now guess how much that is.

I don't know, you know I hate guessing!

What would you say?

-North of a million pounds.

-Wow.

It's amazing, isn't it, just think - it's a piece of canvas

and just the power of the artist's imagination and you get a value like that.

Yeah, but it's also because the art world's authorities

agree on its authenticity.

I mean, this can be a street of broken dreams.

I mean, for every picture that's fully accepted

there are hundreds with question marks above their head.

Which is where we come in.

Patrick Rice and his son Jonathan have made an appointment

to show us a painting that has had a question mark over it for decades.

-Hi there. You must be Patrick.

-Hello.

-Fiona, nice to meet you.

But they believe it's an important work

by one of the world's most sought-after artists.

Here's the painting.

So this is the painting. Can I unwrap it?

Yes, please.

Oh, my word!

-Degas, it says.

-Yes.

-Gosh.

It certainly looks like a Degas.

One of his dancers. Well, that's a typical Degas subject, isn't it?

-I think it is, yes.

-Well, dancers by Degas,

I mean it's one of those great cliches out there, isn't it?

Yes, well, it's interesting because obviously in some ways the main subjects

are the double basses coming out at the front, you know,

which gives it a rather dark quality

but I think it's a very interesting painting.

And how did you come by certainly what looks like a painting

by one of the great Impressionist masters?

Well, my father bought it at the end of the war from Knoedler's.

-Which was an art dealer.

-Yes.

And presumably it wasn't cheap?

No, no, I think it probably was about the right sort of market price

-for the time, £800.

-£800, just after the War.

-Yes.

-That's the equivalent of £20,000 in today's money.

-Yes.

Patrick's father, Edward Denis Rice, was a gentleman farmer from Kent

who married an American heiress in the 1930s.

The family fortune gradually disappeared at the end of the 20th century

and the painting is one of the few surviving mementoes of a more prosperous age.

But Danseuse Bleue, the Blue Dancer, doesn't appear

in the official record of Degas works, the Catalogue Raisonne,

and one expert who examined it in 2009 expressed doubts about its authenticity.

What didn't he like about the painting?

There were a few things.

The face of the dancer, which I think he called trivial,

the position of it, I think he said it was not a formal pose.

And the draughtsmanship of the heads of the double bass and then,

the other one, I guess the bigger one, would be the signature.

Did he not think it looked like a Degas signature?

He had problems with it.

Without the Catalogue Raisonne,

without the expert backup, it's extremely difficult to sell.

If this is Degas, what's it worth?

Well, it's easier to ask what it would be worth if it weren't by Degas -

-probably a few hundred pounds.

-Yeah.

-As a work by Degas, possibly half a million.

-Yeah.

So, if you succeed in proving that this is by Degas,

what do you have in mind for it?

Well, it was handed on to me by my sister in order to help my side of the family.

You know, it is very valuable and the best way that it can be useful

to the whole family is to sell it. I think whatever happens,

it's going to be extremely interesting to clear up the whole mystery of it.

The stakes couldn't be higher for Patrick's painting.

Degas is one of the most popular artists in the world.

He's been the subject of blockbuster exhibitions

and his works take pride of place in galleries such as the Courtauld Institute in London.

I'm going to show you just how high the bar is set.

I mean, if we're going to prove that Patrick's picture is by Degas,

it's going to need to have all the hallmarks of the master who did this.

Just beautiful, isn't it?

Isn't that feeling of artificial lighting extraordinary?

The shadow of the rose on her dress, is cast in that very dramatic way.

It's almost like a snapshot, isn't it,

frozen in mid-pose.

I mean what I love about it is, I mean you know like so many women,

I did a tiny bit of ballet, sort of clumping around the village hall,

-when I was small...

-Clumping?!

Absolutely, and it is every little girl's kind of dream,

those impossibly frothy toile, lighter-than-air skirts.

He used the ballet like some artists used landscapes,

others used still lives, to conquer all the great quests in art -

feeling of light, feeling of colour, feeling of atmosphere.

Feeling of movement.

And movement of course, yes.

And do you think our painting can live up to that?

I mean, it is a tall order, isn't it,

however this is a much bigger picture.

Probably you could say rather more ambitious

and I think there's enough trace elements for us to take Patrick's picture seriously.

I really don't think this rules it out.

Trouble is, Patrick's picture is not in the Catalogue Raisonne,

and this painting of course is.

Yep, and there it is.

425, stamped, numbered, provenance there written up.

I mean, we've got to find a way of getting Patrick's picture into this.

Back in Philip's gallery, it's time to assess the challenge ahead

with the help of our head of research Dr Bendor Grosvenor,

a man with an acute eye for art and a keen instinct for evidence.

I've been having a look at a high-resolution scan of Patrick's picture here

and I think once you get your head round the composition

it's actually quite an intriguing prospect.

So, we've obviously got a little ballet dancer on a stage

and then I think to the right of her,

seems to me like a sort of grotto, background scenery

and then on the left what looks like a seascape.

And those dark looming shapes in the foreground

are in fact double bass heads.

So, this is an orchestra pit and what we're seeing is a performance.

Those double bass heads are rather awkward, aren't they?

Or interesting, depending on your point of view.

I mean, it would be good to know if Degas painted that kind of thing in that way.

But he likes a challenge, Degas, he does awkward.

OK, so what do we know about the picture's history, its provenance?

Well, very helpfully for me, Patrick still has the original invoice

from when his family bought the picture in 1945

and at the bottom of the invoice it says "provenance."

"This picture was bought direct from the Artist by Goupil & Co."

They were a famous firm of art dealers in the 19th century,

"In 1882, and sold by them to Monsieur Emile Heilbuth,

"Founder and editor of the well-known art magazine

"Kunst und Kunstler of Berlin, and now comes from his daughter."

So, we've got a previous owner who was an editor of an art magazine

who bought it from a dealer who bought it from Degas himself.

That's pretty compelling, isn't it?

It is if we can make it all add up.

Unfortunately I think I've spotted a mistake already in this legend.

It says here that the picture was bought in 1882 from Degas,

but we know that Degas was only dealing with another dealer,

Paul Durand-Ruel, until 1887, so the dates don't quite work.

So, how worried should we be about that?

Does that mean it's a fake?

I don't think we should get too hung up on this.

This was, remember, 50 years after Degas sold it, it was passed

from father to daughter, you know, things get lost in that process.

The crucial thing though is to find it physically written in the Goupil Stock Book.

Philip, you're always saying that you can tell as much about a painting from the back as the front,

so is there anything on the back of this painting that can help us?

I'm glad you remembered that but I'm afraid, in this instance,

it's a red herring. There is something on the back

but it's a Christie's stencil.

And Patrick's family took it to Christie's in the 1970s

when he was trying to get it authenticated then.

But it's not necessarily a bad thing that we haven't found

exhibition labels and signs of it being out in the public.

This was a private painting that didn't get that light of day.

Hmmm, well OK, so putting the back of the painting

and the provenance to one side then, is there anything else

we can do to establish whether or not this is a genuine Degas?

I mean this has had some serious accusations thrown against it.

We need now to try and rebuff those.

If there's any new evidence we can unearth at all,

then it might just mean that the people who are compiling

the Catalogue Raisonne will at last put it in.

Our search begins in Degas's hometown.

Paris.

First stop, the Musee D'Orsay.

Once a railway station, it now houses one of the world's finest collections

of Impressionist art, including some of Degas's most important paintings and sculptures.

So, this is the man, Edgar Degas.

He was 21 when he painted this self-portrait,

but he was looking back in those days,

he's looking back to the Old Masters who really influenced him.

So, how did this rather stiff, self-conscious looking

young man turn into the artist who created paintings full of vibrancy

and movement, and who may have created Patrick's painting?

The son of a wealthy banker, Edgar Degas was born in Paris in 1834

and briefly trained as a lawyer before becoming an artist.

The seriousness of his early work gave way to something altogether more daring

and expressive when he discovered the bohemian world of the stage,

as curator Xavier Rey explains.

Xavier, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you and welcome at the Musee d'Orsay.

Thank you.

This particular painting, what can you tell us about it?

This painting is one of the first ballet scenes by Degas

and it's a view that was very unusual for that time,

when you see the orchestra in the foreground

and just the legs of the dancers of the background.

But you notice something similar to Patrick's picture?

Of course, the composition with the double bass sticking up

into the stage area.

But in the same way that the double basses

somehow link you with the stage in Patrick's picture, so too this

seems to sort of, almost like a ladder

up into all the effervescent colour.

Well, that's fascinating and it makes Patrick's picture

seem slightly less outlandish.

There's a continuity of thought there between this painting and Patrick's.

You could see, exactly, you could see how the idea evolved.

In 1874, a radical group of painters called the Impressionists

staged their first exhibition in Paris.

Alongside works by Monet and Renoir was a painting by Degas

that showcased everything he was passionate about in art.

So, this painting shows what the ballet scenes will be all Degas's career.

A study of movement, of different poses of ballet dancers

and also the study of the artificial light.

Could Patrick's little Blue Dancer claim a rightful place

on stage with the rest of Degas's ballerinas?

We need to take our research a step further

and find out more about how Degas painted his favourite subject.

It was a real thrill to see the realism of the poses,

of the dancers, you know, scratching, yawning,

tying up a ballet shoe, fastening a ribbon, and I don't know enough

about ballet to assess whether the dancer's pose in Patrick's painting

is realistic in the way that Degas would have painted.

No, that's something you need to check out further.

I mean, we've seen a lot of evidence today, but provenance is an issue

and it's something I'm going to need to tighten up.

At the time we think Patrick's picture was painted,

in the 1880s, Degas was frequently attending ballet performances

here at the Palais Garnier, a spectacular opera house

in the heart of Paris.

I'm following in Degas's footsteps to get an insight into the world

that inspired him, and to search for evidence that might help prove

he painted our Blue Dancer.

I want to find out if the scene depicted in Patrick's picture,

bears any relation to a performance Degas would have seen here.

Archivist Mathias Auclair has searched out visual records

of two ballets that featured a grotto and seascape

as part of the set, Sylvia and The Tempest.

We have photographs of the set of Sylvia,

and you can see it's Greek style with a temple.

It's a bit of a stretch, isn't it, but I mean there is some water here,

and a sense of an arch, but that's probably about it.

The other one that's been suggested is possibly The Tempest,

have you got anything about The Tempest from this time?

-Yes, we have...

-From 1889.

-Design of the costumes.

Gosh, this wasp waist here. Is that some designer's idealised version of a woman?

Perhaps this one with the electric blue because it's...

Yeah, yeah...and the shape and the style of the skirt,

of the tutu, the headdress.

Maybe.

Possibly, yes.

After a glimpse of the costumes in the archives,

and those hanging now in the costume department,

it's easy to understand why Degas once said his chief interest lay

in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.

But I'm still hoping the ballet might provide us

with more compelling evidence to support Patrick's picture,

and on the other side of town, Philip is on the hunt for more clues

about the painting's history.

According to Patrick's invoice, we should be able to trace his painting

right back to the moment it left Degas's studio.

It's a tantalising prospect,

but all I've got to go on are two names, Goupil and Heilbuth.

To find out more, I've come to visit the archives of the man who managed Degas's business affairs,

renowned art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.

He was well acquainted with all the players in the Paris art scene

and his descendants Flavie and Paul-Louis have been searching

his records for information about the names on our list.

The first stage in our provenance is that we have a record of the picture

being sold by Degas to Goupil. Now, who is Goupil?

Goupil was mainly a seller and producer of lithographs and prints,

but then Theo Van Gogh, the brother of the painter Vincent,

worked with Goupil and was a very astute dealer

and he brought quite a lot of business to Goupil.

This is good news for us.

Degas was notoriously picky about who he did business with

but he trusted Theo Van Gogh

and sold him some paintings of dancers between 1887 and 1891.

So, there's a real chance that Van Gogh's brother would

have bought our picture?

-Yes.

-Well, there's a thought.

The last owner of this picture was a chap called Emil Heilbuth,

who had a German connection, can you tell us anything about him?

Well, Durand-Ruel had quite a long and active relationship

with Heilbuth, he was sort of an unofficial agent in Germany.

He knew collectors there and acted as a middleman.

This is intriguing stuff. Emil Heilbuth, the previous owner of Patrick's picture,

wasn't just the editor of a German magazine, he was also an art dealer

and he seems to have been a keen buyer of Degas's works.

You have here Degas bought by Heilbuth on 25th of October 1895.

Ah, now that's interesting, because it shows that Heilbuth

has a particular interest in this artist Degas.

With Fiona and I following up leads in Paris, Bendor and Jonathan

turn their attention to the criticisms levelled at the painting.

The auction house Christie's had expressed interest in the picture

in 2009 until a Degas expert they consulted

found fault with the dancer's face and the artist's signature.

But are there grounds for a second opinion?

So, we've got here three absolutely authentic Degas signatures

on different pictures, but I don't know about you, but to me

they look as if they could all perhaps be by a different artist.

-That one's very sort of rapidly painted, isn't it?

-Yeah.

And what I like about this one at the bottom is your expert

said that the G was a little bit problematic

but I find that quite similar to yours.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then here we've also got the sort of hook of the D.

Yeah. And I think with your picture it's quite interesting

because it's quite small it's different from doing a...

a signature on a big finished painting, and it's a little bit like

when you're trying to sign your own signature

on the back of a credit card. You always get it wrong, don't you,

it doesn't quite look like your normal signature,

but maybe that's what was going on with Degas here.

If I was forging that picture, I think I would go out there

-to make the signature look...

-Look really good.

More like a Degas signature. So, the fact that it looks peculiar,

-could actually be an argument in its favour.

-Hmm.

What else did the connoisseur not like about your picture?

He had concerns over the face of the dancer.

The face of the dancer, right.

He described it sort of "trivial features".

I mean, I suppose you can see what he means in a way,

because it is a little bit awkward, isn't it?

With that funny little sort of grimace

and that funny little pair of eyes.

Well, it's a very subjective thing.

Even though it is sort of very simply drawn

I think it's also very sort of competently drawn.

Well, I've been having a little look amongst other Degas.

What I think's really interesting is that the faces of these little figures

-are actually, you could call them trivialised too, couldn't you?

-Yeah.

I mean, this one here looks like it was drawn by a five-year-old.

Yeah, it does.

And we've got some more examples here.

Again you could say that these are rather trivial faces,

couldn't you?

So, I think what we're dealing with here is...

It's quite difficult to actually make a firm opinion on a little face

like that because in real life it's tiny,

isn't it, I mean look, it's not even half a centimetre big.

The Degas expert who examined Patrick's painting

was also critical of the dancer's pose.

As an artist, Degas was meticulous about the way

he portrayed his dancers, depicting realistic ballet positions.

But can we prove that the dancer in Patrick's painting

is balanced in an authentic ballet pose?

Back in the Palais Garnier in Paris,

I enlisted the help of the head of ballet, a dancer, and a photographer

to try and recreate the scene.

We have here a picture which may or may not be by Degas,

but the important thing I wanted you to look at is the pose of this dancer.

Viviane, is this pose wrong?

Well, what we're wondering, Leonore, is if you could take that position,

we could catch a snapshot of it and then we could compare it with this.

-Yes.

-Yeah? Great.

Sebastian, do you want to, let's see if we can capture that.

Degas was fascinated by the new technique of photography.

He got his first camera in 1895

and used it to take photos of himself and his artist friends.

But in an age when taking a photo was a slow and laborious process,

Degas still had the edge in his art,

capturing the turn of a heel or the twirl of a skirt

in a way that the early photographers could only dream of.

Now I don't want to be fussy but I think she's looking down.

-Ah yeah, yeah, yeah.

-I think she's looking down like that.

C'est un problem?

Is that a problem, would you not naturally do that, or...?

Or it's OK? Oh, brilliant, OK.

SHE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

So, the position's not fixed, you're swaying.

IN FRENCH

So, so, yes, looking down, facing forward.

That's exactly it, I think. That's it, isn't it?

I mean, that is it.

Good.

Thanks very much.

The third one.

That's it.

I mean, that's real progress for us. Degas could have painted that.

Oh, look at that.

I have to say that is better than I expected.

Thank you, thank you, Leonore. That's just great.

After a fruitful trip to Paris, we reconvene back at Philip's gallery.

Bendor has been looking for hard evidence to back up the story

on Patrick's invoice and he thinks he's found it.

Now, I've been having a look in the Goupil & Co Stock Books

and there is a reference to what could be our picture,

it's here in 1889, stock number 19873

and the title of the picture is Danseuse Bleue Et Contrebasses,

which means Blue Dancer and Double Basses,

and it was bought from Degas for 600 francs.

Then in the final Goupil Stock Book instalment,

we find that the picture was sold to Heilbuth.

On paper the provenance is all very convincing, but we need to prove

that the painting Patrick has now was the same picture

that's in all these stock books from earlier on.

But I've been going through the Catalogue Raisonne here,

with which I've become very familiar, and unfortunately here's a picture

-I think you might recognise.

-Gosh, that's almost identical, isn't it?

-To Patrick's painting.

-Mm-hm.

It hangs in an art gallery in Hamburg

and it was given to them in the 1920s by a collector,

who bought it in the 1890s from our friend Emil Heilbuth.

Heilbuth?

That's extraordinary because we're dealing with the same provenance,

well, sounds like it, the same composition.

So, we have to ask ourselves, is that going to be a problem?

This is our first serious obstacle.

If the entry in the Goupil Stock Book actually relates to the Hamburg painting,

is Patrick's picture just masquerading as a genuine Degas work?

-Bendor, can we see both pictures side by side?

-Yes.

Because surely, I mean look at them, we have to at least consider

the possibility that Patrick's is a copy, you know, a fake?

Well, I share your concerns.

Though presumably if it was fake that would be before 1945,

because after that date it was in the possession of Patrick's family,

-we know that.

-Yes, although unfortunately the mention of that year, 1945,

slightly rings alarm bells in our world, wouldn't you say?

I have to say that chilling date can be the kiss of death

to an otherwise decent provenance.

I mean, if you can imagine you've got the end of the Nazi era,

the end of the Second World War chaos...

There are literally thousands of masterpieces that go missing

and it becomes a wonderful smokescreen for forgers

to try and pass off their fakes as those missing originals

and in fact in Germany the police have just been prosecuting

a master forger who was doing exactly that.

Well, maybe then we could talk to the German police about our painting

and see how they spotted their fakes.

I've come to Berlin, to follow up Bendor's lead

about a major investigation into fake artworks with stolen provenances.

I've secured a meeting in the grandly named

State Criminal Police Office Department of Art

with Marcus Schonfelder, one of the detectives who helped convict

Europe's most prolific modern forger, Wolfgang Beltracchi.

He was jailed for six years in 2011 for creating 14 fictitious works

by renowned modern artists, but police believe he faked many more.

We've got French, we've got Dutch, we've got German,

we've got Modernism, we've got Cubism, Surrealism.

I mean, he could turn his hand to anything, couldn't he?

Yeah, it seemed so.

When these paintings were thought to be genuine,

how much were they worth?

-Millions.

-Millions?

-Millions.

-Wow.

The most valuable I think is the Derain.

For more than 4,000,000.

Wow, and I mean he managed to trick art experts,

gallery owners, museums.

Yes. For a long time, I think for more than 20 years.

The genius of Beltracchi's crime lay in the way he researched paintings

that had gone missing during the Second World War.

He then created his own versions of them, claiming the paintings

had suddenly resurfaced from long-lost Jewish art collections.

He made fake labels for the collections,

soaking them in coffee so they would look old.

Beltracchi's partner Helene even posed beside the fakes

in period dress in a photograph that was doctored to look like it had been taken in the 1920s.

A trick that was only exposed when the police discovered

they'd bought the bronze sculpture in 2003.

And how many did he paint?

In the last interview I heard that he painted works from 50 artists,

so you could count..

-Dozens and dozens and dozens. Hundreds?

-Perhaps.

I don't know, really. That's his knowledge and his...

-And he's keeping it.

-And he's keeping it.

So, presumably there are Beltracchi fakes on museum walls still?

-In collections, in galleries?

-Perhaps.

The art world fell for Beltracchi's fakes

because they had the provenance of the original missing work.

Could someone have played the same trick on Patrick's father in 1945?

Looking at the possible Degas, the sale letter talks of,

it was sold in 1945 and it's written,

a history of who it belonged to.

-But that could be made up, we just don't know.

-Yes.

Beltracchi was finally caught when forensic tests

on a suspicious picture revealed the presence of a pigment

that didn't exist at the time it was supposed to have been painted.

My advice would be to go to a scientist to analyse the pigments,

the layers, everything.

-So, expert connoisseurship on its own is not enough?

-No, not really.

The Beltracchi case shows how important science can be in exposing fakes.

To be sure that there are no suspicious pigments

in Patrick's picture I've come to University College London

to meet Kathleen Froyen, an art historian with a high-tech gadget

that wouldn't look out of place in a James Bond film.

An art gun that can identify the chemicals in oil paint

and trace them right back to the artist's palette.

We're looking for chemical elements, and from the combination of elements

that we find we can deduct which pigments were used.

I see, so every pigment has its own, as it were,

DNA that this gun can pick up.

Yes. On average we'll find about ten to 15 elements.

This is good cos we've actually found mercury here

which means that he used vermillion to paint this very bright red.

I see, so mercury is the sort of bed-fellow of vermillion as it were.

-Yes, it is.

-What does vermillion tell us?

-Well, the Impressionists,

and Post-Impressionist painters, were particularly attracted to this pigment

because it was a brilliant scarlet, so they loved using it, it really caught their eye.

There is one pigment that we just don't want to find in Patrick's picture.

Titanium White.

Only in use a year after Degas's death in 1917,

its presence would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt

that the painting is a fake.

-So, you're going for the bonnet of the dancer?

-I am, yes,

it's the most obvious area where there's white present.

Well, this is very encouraging. As you can see here

the main elements found are lead, which is good because it indicates that probably lead white

was used and not titanium white.

-As opposed to the dreaded titanium.

-Yes.

Phew.

Also a combination of copper and arsenic, that we found here,

indicates that most likely he used emerald green,

which is fascinating because it was used a lot in Degas's time,

but throughout the 20th century, kind of phased out

because it was poisonous and the pigment was eventually banned in the 1960s.

Oh, right. Well, that helps us a bit.

The pigments in Patrick's painting seem to be consistent

with the Impressionist period.

There's even evidence of certain colours specific to Degas's palette.

But to be more confident that it isn't just a copy of the one in Germany,

I've brought Patrick and his painting to Hamburg's renowned art gallery.

For the first time in his life

Patrick will be able to compare the two paintings side by side.

Can his Blue Dancer hold its own next to a genuine work

with remarkable similarities?

Ah, there it is.

Ah, yes.

That's an extraordinary moment for me.

Yes, fascinating as the double basses are placed almost exactly

in the same position. It's extraordinary.

Yes, the most obvious

and sort of distinctive difference is in the tone.

This is possibly a more brightly lit scene

and that's a bit more twilight, wouldn't you say?

This has got a... Yes, it is a twilight, heavier look to it.

-This is much more modern looking, really.

-Yes.

-It's slightly brasher.

-Yes, yes.

There's a chunkiness about it which is very pleasing,

actually I think it's lovely.

You're about to say you prefer this.

No, no, no.

Comparing the pictures on the wall is one thing,

but the gallery have agreed to help us go one step further

and take their painting out of its frame for closer inspection.

Meanwhile, I've arrived in Hamburg with a mission of my own.

This was the hometown of the mysterious Emil Heilbuth

and I want to know more about the man who figures prominently

in the provenance of both paintings.

I've come to the gallery's archive to meet historian Dr Alex Bastek.

He's written about Heilbuth's life and career

and shows me the only known photo of him.

He attended the art college in Munich,

and we know that there must be paintings by Heilbuth as well

but we've no images of these at all.

We know him best as an art critic, he wrote for several art magazines

like Kunst und Kunstler, in fact Heilbuth was the first art critic

to write a favourable article about Claude Monet in Germany.

So, he was a supporter of Impressionism in Germany?

-Yes, right.

-Now you say he was an art critic but obviously,

I mean, he owned Patrick's painting, so he was, what was he, a collector?

He collected art to re-sell it, he was occasionally working

as an art dealer as well, but most of all to teach the public

what is modern art. He held lessons at the Weimar Kunst Academy

with his three Monet paintings he possessed.

So, he saw it as his mission, did he, to convert people

-to Impressionism and to painters like Degas?

-Yes, very much.

We have a quite interesting letter here written in 1893,

where he describes the painting of Degas.

"Greater beauty and achieved with these simple means

"I can not imagine".

That's what he wrote about Degas.

Heilbuth's passion for Degas made him a convincing salesman.

He sold the painting that now hangs in the Hamburg gallery

to a wealthy German collector who proudly displayed it

alongside his Old Masters.

You can just make out the double basses there,

can't you, in the foreground.

Without a photograph of Patrick's painting hanging on Emil Heilbuth's wall,

we can only assume that he kept it all his life

and passed it on to his daughter, as the original invoice suggests.

The fact that Heilbuth never sold the painting

that Patrick certainly believes is by Degas,

do you think that's unusual?

No, there might be several paintings he kept just to possess them,

and to be an art collector as you expect someone to be.

So, not necessarily because he couldn't sell them,

because he didn't want to sell them?

No, just because he loved this one and wanted to possess it.

Back in the gallery's library,

the moment of truth has arrived for Patrick

and me as curator Jenns Howoldt unveils their Degas dancer

and we get the opportunity to make a direct comparison with Patrick's painting.

Hello there, how nice to meet you,

and thank you so much for taking this painting out of its frame for us.

I have to say this is a terrific moment, isn't it,

I mean, there is no better way than comparing art

-than in the flesh like this, is there?

-No, absolutely.

I have to say something strikes me, now we're seeing the two,

the two patients, as it were, naked, without their clothes on.

Your picture is thicker, the paint has a little bit more depth.

Yes, I noticed that.

The Hamburg painting seems altogether more spontaneous,

even the ground layer of white paint that the surface has been primed with is doing some work.

This makes this picture so interesting,

because this has to do with light,

and he uses this areas of the priming as a light source.

And I get the impression that there's more...

..more of a sense of evolution in your painting

as if he's trying to arrive at the composition.

Yeah, I think so, it seems to have involved more of a struggle really.

The other one maybe came much more easily.

Yes, I mean, in your picture,

it looks as though the solution has been arrived at

and he's playing, you know, he's playing with ideas and colours.

Exactly, it's got a lighter touch altogether.

Degas was an experimental artist who liked to try out different

techniques and materials.

As an alternative to canvas,

he occasionally painted on wooden panels.

Patrick's picture is on mahogany, but what about the Hamburg painting?

Do you happen to know what wood yours is made from?

Yes, this is, um... Obviously, it's mahogany.

-It's mahogany?

-Yeah.

I mean, there are quite a few possible choices of wood,

so the fact that they're both mahogany I find very encouraging.

And although yours is covered with brown paper

you can see that the edge has been similarly bevelled,

which allows you to fit it into a frame better,

apart from anything else.

But one immediate thing that I've just noticed is this stamp

on the back. Now I wasn't expecting to see that.

Do you know anything about that?

Not exactly, we can read one single word, this is "Paris".

-I should think it's the artist's supplier.

-I think that's quite possible.

-But it gives us a lead, another lead.

-Yes, yes, yes, it does indeed.

What we've seen today is actually really encouraging

and we've seen two paintings that share very much the same characteristics,

I mean, the same approach to the subject matter,

the same support, seeing how they're both on mahogany.

I have to say I'm slightly more optimistic than I was,

but I still think we've got quite a way to go.

How did you get on?

INAUDIBLE RESPONSE

We both had cause for optimism after our visit to Hamburg,

but we still needed to find out why the painting suddenly appeared

in a London art dealers at the end of the Second World War.

If Patrick's picture is genuine, we have to believe it was in the hands

of Emil Heilbuth's family until this point,

and the only people who can confirm that are Heilbuth's descendants.

But we've made a thrilling break-through.

We've tracked down Heilbuth's great-granddaughter Hilary.

She lives in America but she's flown over here to give us some answers.

Hilary, thank you so much for coming.

Oh, it's a delight, thank you.

Can you trace back the family connection for me?

Emil Heilbuth married an Englishwoman and they had a daughter, Katie,

my grandma, and she had a son Claude, my father,

and there he is when he was at Oxford.

And then it ends with you, for the purposes of our story.

Yes, he had me.

So, is there any specific family memory about the sale of the picture

we're looking into?

Oh, yes. My father specifically recalls

my grandmother having to sell this Degas ballet dancer painting in 1945

because she needed money.

It's fascinating.

Hilary's grandmother Katie married an Austrian Jew, in 1933.

They lived in Vienna until the rise of the Nazis forced them

to flee with all their belongings.

She had the foresight to get to London,

because that was where her family was, and where my grandma went,

the collection went, after Emil died and left it to her.

So, your grandmother inherited a whole collection from Emil Heilbuth?

-Hmm.

-So what sort of names are we talking about?

There were two Manet lithographs, large ones,

there was a Munch painting.

We've still got this little Degas dancer,

is what we've always known it as.

This is a reproduction of it.

It's a very sweet-looking little sketch, isn't it?

It's charming.

So, in terms of the provenance of this painting then,

we're doing pretty well, aren't we?

I mean, if we're tracing it from Degas to Goupil, Degas's dealer, to your great-grandfather...

Down through the family, to your grandmother,

to your father who remembers this painting being sold,

we then pick up the trail at Knoedler's,

the dealers, where we have the document saying it was sold to the Rice family.

I mean, that is an unbroken line of provenance.

-Yes.

-Doesn't get much better than that, does it?

I mean it's the sort of evidence that would convince a jury,

but will it convince the Catalogue Raisonne writer?

Hilary's story is compelling

but Bendor might just have found the hard evidence

we need to back it up. A separate entry in the Goupil Stock Books

that proves Emil Heilbuth did buy two virtually identical Degas dancers.

I've found a little nugget of provenance which I think is going to help our cause.

It turns out that the picture in Hamburg, which we know belonged to Heilbuth,

has its own provenance going all the way back to Degas in 1889.

So, there's no question of the provenance of Patrick's picture

being muddled up with the picture in Hamburg.

In fact, the Hamburg picture, ironically,

could actually help us prove Patrick's,

because it could easily be some sort of variance,

some sort of first idea, for the Hamburg painting.

I mean, we sell versions of things all the time.

I mean, Henry VIIIs and Nelsons, coming out of our ears.

Patrick's painting could be a study for the other one,

I mean artists did this, we know that Degas did this

and added to which, they're both on almost identical panels.

Well, I've done some research into the label

which you found on the back of the panel of the picture in Hamburg

and it comes from a firm of artists' suppliers called Rey & Perrot

and their headquarters were just round the corner from Degas's studio.

Annoyingly, we haven't got that stamp on the back of Patrick's picture,

but I have had Patrick's picture X-rayed

and it shows at the very least that it was prepared with a base layer

or a ground layer of lead white paint, which is just how people

like Rey & Perrot used to prepare the panels they sold to artists in Paris.

OK, so both paintings are on the same professionally prepared

19th century artists' supplier panel.

Which is circumstantial at best really,

but then if we add in the pigment analysis that you did

and the provenance, does this mean we are now ready to submit

Patrick's painting to the people who write the Catalogue Raisonne then?

Nearly, but not quite.

There's a woman I would love to show this to - Anthea Callen.

She's seen as an oracle on this whole subject of Impressionism.

If we can get her blessing for this picture

I'd feel so much more comfortable taking it out to France.

Getting an audience with Dr Anthea Callen hasn't been easy.

She divides her time between Britain, France and Australia

and her expertise as an authenticator is always in demand.

She's reviewed the results of our forensic tests on the pigments

and the panel but will she buy into our theories about the signature

and the face of the dancer?

She agreed to meet us at the Courtauld Institute in London

to offer her opinion.

Anthea, hello. What do you make of our little painting?

It's an interesting problem. It's an interesting problem.

There are all sorts of things that are good about it

but I think there are definitely some serious queries as well.

So, you've seen the tests now we've had done,

the chemical analysis of the pigments,

and they all seem to suggest that they're late 19th century

or were certainly used at that date, now how do you respond to that?

I think the pigments are very characteristic,

both of the period and of Degas.

What you find a good deal of in the results is the earth colours.

Like red iron oxide, or yellow ochre for example,

which aren't characteristic of most of the Impressionist painters' palettes,

but nevertheless were regularly used by Degas, so that's all good.

What about the signature, how does that look to you?

Because that has been raised as an issue in the past.

Yes, the signature goes very woolly after the D.

The D I can accept but between the D and the S it goes rather sort of blurred and woolly.

I mean, the signature did keep changing, though.

Oh, absolutely, yes, absolutely. It's possible but it's...

Give me something which you think is really against,

because your expression suggests that you stand both sides of the line.

Well, I would be concerned both about the...

in a sense, the draughtsmanship, the construction of it.

For example, in the heads of the double basses, for me the drawing is not quite right.

He hasn't fully articulated the forms of those bass heads

which he does in other work, so he clearly knows the instruments really well.

One of the least convincing elements is actually the face.

It's almost too cute, too pretty.

I have to say I love what I'm hearing in a way

because this is connoisseurship in action.

Sure, but with the greatest respect to you, Anthea,

obviously connoisseurship is an opinion and there will be several opinions.

-Of course, but some people are more informed than others.

-Absolutely!

With Anthea sharing some of the same concerns as the Degas expert

who examined Patrick's painting in 2009,

the idea that someone else had a hand in the work still can't be ruled out.

Have you ever seen other Degas in inverted commas,

that look like this?

No, I haven't actually, I haven't.

So, I mean if it is a fake it's a very good one.

Whoever has done this knows what they're doing.

-So, either Degas, or a master of crime.

-Exactly.

This is, I think, on a knife edge.

With one of the world's leading Impressionist experts finding

it too close to call, are Patrick and Jonathan still happy for us

to submit the painting to the Degas Catalogue Raisonne in Paris

for final judgement?

Given that we have this slightly double-edged response from Anthea,

are you prepared now for us to go forward?

Oh, definitely yes and I think on balance it's good news

and we have to just accept what happens at the next stage.

The case we've built up makes it a far easier judgement

to say that it is by Degas than it's not.

The Blue Dancer is making the most important journey of her life.

All we can do is wait.

The fate of the painting now lies in the hands of Galerie Brame and Lorenceau,

the Parisian firm who control the Catalogue Raisonne.

They have the sole right to rule on the authenticity of Degas's work,

and in the art world, new and previously unknown Impressionist paintings are a rare discovery.

But after more than a month of intense scrutiny,

the Blue Dancer is back in England and a letter has arrived from Paris.

Depending on what's in this letter

Patrick's painting is either worth a few hundred pounds or a few hundred thousand pounds.

-Are you ready?

-Mm-hm.

Oh, my God, I'm trembling slightly.

"Brame and Lorenceau.

"Nous avons le plaisir... We have the pleasure to confirm to you

"That the painting described below, which you have submitted

"For our appreciation is an authentic Degas."

-Oh, my God!

-That's fantastic.

-Oh, my goodness!

We've done it, we've done it!

That's the shortest, sweetest, most fantastic letter I've ever read.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, I just can't believe that. I was convinced...

-So was I.

-When I woke up this morning that...

-Ah, ye of little faith.

Yeah, this was not going to be. Oh, my God!

And have you noticed it's already begun to change.

THEY LAUGH

It's shining.

Patrick and Jonathan are going to be here any minute,

and I can't wait to tell them.

After more than 60 years of uncertainty,

Patrick and Jonathan are about to get the proof they've dreamed of.

Hi there, nice to see you both.

The results are in here.

How are you feeling?

Well, I think we both feel absolutely on the edge,

because we know how tricky the whole business is.

We think it's unlikely that it got through.

Well, brace yourselves.

"We have the pleasure to inform you that the painting described below

"That you have submitted for our appreciation

"Is an authentic work by Edgar Degas."

That's absolutely fantastic. That is, thank you.

-Isn't that great? Are you shocked?

-Congratulations.

Thank you so much.

-It's congratulations to you actually, or everyone here.

-Here is your Degas.

-Brilliant.

-You're completely shocked.

-No I am, I am really shocked.

I mean, I think it's a real kind of lesson in not giving up

because I really didn't think it was possible.

With this letter, the line at the bottom here says

"This painting will be reproduced in the second supplement

"Of the Catalogue Raisonne of the work of Degas."

Now that is the seal of approval that you need.

If you're going to sell this painting, that's what you need, you've got it.

I mean, what would that be worth now?

Well, I can see, you know, for a pocket-sized Degas

there would a lot of collectors out there who would love this.

A ballet image by the great name, I could see it being worth half a million if not more,

half a million pounds if not more.

Yes, yes. Obviously with my children the best thing would be that it were sold

-and it would help with their mortgages and everything else.

-Do you feel your dad should do that?

-I'm not going to tell him not to.

-That was the arrangement.

I think this calls for some champagne, I don't know about you.

Most definitely.

Cheers.

To the christening of the new Degas.

I'm so thrilled for them.

You know, to think that one letter has made all the difference.

And you know so often in this world that I occupy,

I've seen people's dreams crushed,

but equally on occasions I've seen lives transformed.

And do you know,

I'm already looking forward to the next painting that turns up.

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