Turner: A Miscarriage of Justice? Fake or Fortune?

18 million. 500,000. 19 million...

The art world. A place of outrageous fortune...

Selling, at 95 million.

..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.

In this episode we explore a group of paintings

once thought to be by Britain's greatest landscape painter -

Turner.

For over 60 years they've been condemned as fakes.

"We cannot show those pictures on our walls again."

It's a pretty harsh letter.

We work with the world's leading Turner experts

to try and clear their name.

My guess is that there's been a miscarriage of justice, somehow.

And I would like to try and prove it.

This has to be the spot. I'm convinced.

But we find opinions in the art world are hard to change.

We're going to need the man who actually said, "No," to say, "Yes."

Now, in the art world, that's a big ask.

We're on our way to Wales to see a group of important paintings

with a bad reputation.

Nearly 60 years ago, they were accused of being fakes.

But Philip thinks a mistake may have been made.

So you think, even though these paintings have been branded fakes,

the people who sat in judgement upon them may have got it wrong?

I think it's quite possible.

And the terrible thing about the art world is,

once something has been branded a fake,

it can act like a sort of death sentence.

I mean, the picture can be tainted thereafter.

And there's a lot at stake, isn't there?

There's a huge amount at stake.

Potentially, we're talking about one of the most exciting artists at work

in the whole history of British painting.

We're talking about Turner.

Joseph Mallord William Turner

is the master of British landscape painting.

He's one of the nation's most celebrated artists.

The man who created The Fighting Temereire.

The paintings we've come to investigate

were once hailed as genuine works by Turner's hand.

They had pride of place on the walls

of the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.

The crowning glory of an extraordinary collection

amassed by two Welsh sisters with a taste for great art.

In the early years of the 20th Century,

Gwendoline and Margaret Davies spent much of their vast fortune

buying the cream of European art as a gift to the people of Wales.

Their hope was to assemble a national collection

that would rank amongst the finest in the world.

This is a fabulous collection.

I mean, we've got Monet, Renoir, Cezanne,

some of the greatest names in art.

It was a hugely generous bequest.

I mean, it put art in Wales really on the map

and they spent more money on Turner than any other artist.

But can you imagine how depressing it would be

to be told that the stars of your collection were fakes?

Were paintings not worthy to hang on these walls?

When Gwendoline Davies died in 1951

her paintings were received here with great excitement.

But, within months, the prized Turners were called into question.

Margate Jetty,

Off Margate

and Beacon Light have left a stain on the Davies Sisters' legacy.

Curator Beth McIntyre hopes we can help restore their good name.

So, these are the "Turners of shame"?

Yes, these are the Turners which were looked at in 1956

and were deemed to be wrong or not by Turner

and were taken off display at that time.

And have sort of lain here, languishing and unloved?

Yeah, some of them haven't been shown to the public since that time.

So, how did this happen? Presumably, when the paintings

arrived at the museum, they must have been thrilled.

Oh, they were absolutely thrilled. These were the first oil paintings

to go on the wall by Turner, but unfortunately,

soon after they arrived, people started to ask questions.

And the museum felt that they had look at it further.

They had to investigate it.

So, what went wrong?

Well, they were rejected really for two reasons.

Firstly there were issues with their provenance.

Yeah. I mean, provenance can make or break a picture.

I've seen that happen.

A painting's got to work on paper, as it were.

You've got to be able to follow it through, preferably,

from the moment it was painted to today. That can be very persuasive.

-What, through the various owners?

-Correct.

Or dissuasive, if you've got great gaps.

And what was the second ground?

The second ground was really how they looked,

which is all down to connoisseurship.

So, they decided to get the experts together

and look at them side-by-side other works by Turner

and make decisions on them.

Were they unanimous that they were not Turners? Did they all agree?

They all agreed that they weren't Turners.

What a blow! My goodness.

Yes, absolutely. A dreadful blow for the museum,

but also for the Davies family.

Because, of course, Margaret Davies was still alive at that time.

So she had to receive the news herself.

Yes. So, having given them, to be told,

"No thanks. they're fakes or they're copies."

It feels, at least, ungrateful.

This is a case where national treasures are at stake,

and a generous family legacy has been spurned.

The Davies sisters were unlikely art collectors.

Shy and deeply religious,

they never married and led a puritanical existence,

choosing instead to devote their fortune

to improve the lives of others.

They used their wealth to transform the cultural life of Wales.

Margaret was nearly 80 when she found out

that her sister's Turners had been rejected.

I'm meeting their closest descendant,

Lord David Davies and his wife Bea,

to see how Margaret took the news.

-Hello.

-Hello.

Fiona, nice to meet you. Hi there, Lord Davies.

Hello, very nice to see you.

I'm having a closer look at the rejected paintings,

to try and get a clearer view of why they've been condemned.

I've got here the letter that was written to your Great Aunt Margaret

on the 31st of January, 1956,

breaking the news to her.

It says, "Dear Miss Davies, We all agree that, whereas

"The Morning After The Wreck and The Morning After The Storm were all right,

"others are either the work of imitators,

"or workings-up by some other artist

"of rudimentary beginnings by Turner,

"so complete as to render them pictures by somebody else."

So, taking this central picture, Beacon Light.

The 1956 committee said that this picture was started by Turner

it was a rudimentary beginning by the artist

and then finished by another hand.

But I've been looking at it and, we need to do tests,

but this doesn't feel like a painting that is begun with one hand

and then finished with another. You can always tell that.

There's a sort of feeling of a Chinese whisper.

It starts in one way and then sort of oddly changes

as your eye passes over the surface.

"This has been a great blow to us,

"and I am afraid it cannot fail to be one to you, too.

"But, of course, we cannot show those pictures on our walls again."

What do you make of that?

Pretty hard letter to receive.

How do you think Margaret would have felt about that?

I think she'd be pretty devastated.

It's a pretty harsh letter, actually.

Now, they felt about this picture here

that it was almost certainly by an imitator,

a forger, as it were, trying to do a Turner.

And I think probably what put them off most was the size.

It's unusually small, particularly for the broad way it's painted.

Now, a theory that's been put forward,

and I reckon there's a lot of truth of this,

it may well be part of a larger picture

and this is a fragment.

There are tests that can be done in order to establish

whether the painting was once bigger.

"Miss Davies has asked me

"to acknowledge your letter of yesterday's date.

"I need hardly tell you how shocked she is to have this news.

"It does look as if someone has pulled off a fast one."

That would have really upset Margaret.

-What, the dishonesty of it?

-Yes, indeed.

And they'd taken such care over the collecting of their paintings.

My guess is there has been a miscarriage of justice somehow

and I would like to try and prove it.

We must make a cracking case for the defence.

It's 60 years on, we must approach this with fresh eyes.

I feel these have been suffering from

a jaundiced, old fashioned view.

Advances in modern technology mean we can now look at paintings

in ways they've never been seen before.

Forensic investigation can reveal much

to prove whether a work is genuine or fake.

We've asked Senior Conservator Adam Webster

to begin scientific analysis of the rejected Turners.

He's taking microscopic fragments of paint

from the edges of the works

which can be tested to discover how they were painted

and with what materials.

The samples are so tiny that damage to our paintings is negligible.

Then we can try and cross-match the results with genuine Turners.

I have to say, I find this really exciting.

I mean, we're going to be subjecting these pictures

to the sort of physical analysis that they've never had.

I mean, this is a real first.

It is, this is something that didn't happen in the 1956 committee.

Although they consulted conservators,

it was only using microscopes,

not doing this kind of scientific analysis we're able to do today.

So, this is really like a post-mortem, an autopsy.

It's a process that lets us look beneath the surface.

So, what the naked eye can't see,

what paints were used, it will give us a detailed look

at what the painting is actually made of.

And then, of course, we can compare those results

with paintings actually by Turner, to see if they match or not.

There is a chilling aspect to all of this.

If they find in these paintings a compound,

a chemical, that wasn't around, that wasn't invented

during Turner's lifetime

then the attribution of these pictures to Turner

is dead in the water.

Technical analysis of a painting

is a meticulous process which can take weeks.

So, with three pictures to investigate,

Adam has his work cut out.

'Back at Philip's gallery in London,

'we're meeting head of research Dr Bendor Grosvenor.

'If there are clues which will prove whether a work of art is genuine,

'he's the man to find them.'

I assume that Turner, being so popular an artist,

must be much copied and there must be a lot of fakes out there as well?

I reckon we probably see

at least two dodgy Turners a week coming up for sale.

I mean, a Turner is a real prize.

He's an artist that people will fake.

So you're sticking your neck out here, then?

But I wouldn't do unless I thought there was a really high chance

that these paintings are right.

Take, for example, Off Margate there.

If we can prove that this is by the artist himself,

that's, what, £500,000?

And then there's Margate Jetty,

Similar sort of story.

Just put the magic name Turner there

and that becomes a painting of similar value.

But Beacon Light, I mean this is such a monumental image.

-We're talking, what, £10-15 million?

-Wow!

I know provenance has been an issue, hasn't it, with these paintings?

All three of these pictures are associated

with a rather controversial aspect of Turner's life.

At a time when he was involved in a secret relationship

which shocked the art world.

They're all thought to have belonged to his secret mistress,

Mrs Sophia Caroline Booth.

She was the landlady of a boarding house in Margate,

which Turner used to go and stay at.

Someone's rather helpfully marked the house with an 'x'

in this nice old photograph of Margate.

Now, although Turner spent 18 years of his life with her,

nobody knew about it till after he died

and there was a great scandal in the art world.

And, of course, the Royal Academy was

the ultimate badge of respectability.

And the idea of someone like Turner,

who was a sort of towering figure within that,

having a bit on the side just didn't fit.

Quite impressive, having a bit on the side in secret for 18 years, I have to say.

And he then, presumably, gave these paintings to Mrs Booth?

Well, that's certainly what the Davies sisters thought.

When they bought these pictures, they bought them as part of a set

which they believed had hung in Turners house in London,

on the embankment in Chelsea, which he had shared with Mrs Booth.

But the 1956 committee viewed this whole provenance source

with great suspicion and distaste.

So we need to get to the bottom, then,

of what that suspicion was, exactly,

around that whole Mrs Booth provenance issue?

Our investigation has led us to the North Kent coast, to Margate,

on the trail of Turner and Mrs Booth.

Turner once said,

"The skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe."

Though he travelled all over Britain and the Continent,

he returned here time and time again

to paint the light, the sky and the sea.

Mrs Booth's guest house on the harbour

became a second home for Turner.

It stood right at the end of the jetty, looking out to sea.

We're standing where Mrs Booth's guest house stood

and where Turner and Mrs Booth must have battled the winds, as we are.

Look, you can see where Jarvis's Landing Place

or Jarvis's Jetty for short pushed out into the sea.

And that's where the steamers would come

and where the people would get off and make their way into Margate.

And here we have Margate Jetty.

And, topographically, that's spot on.

But what about this, then?

Off Margate. How does that look standing here in this spot?

Well, there again, you can see it, a tower,

which is in fact a lighthouse.

I give you the lighthouse.

And there, on the left, the clock tower.

This is the view that Turner encountered.

Cos Turner wouldn't have far to go, would he?

He could either paint it from Mrs Booth's window

or just step outside with his easel.

And, look, who knows, maybe the same squally weather we're having now?

If you can link a picture back to the artist

and what he personally encountered,

it makes it so much more convincing

when you're trying to argue for authenticity.

But the problem picture is Beacon Light,

because it's been identified as a picture painted

in the Isle of Wight.

And my feeling is that it's quite possibly

a painting done around here.

The question is, though, where?

I suspect, but I need to prove,

that Turner painted all the rejected works

around the Kent coastline in his later years, during the 1840s.

Here in Margate, the newly built Turner Contemporary Gallery

has been showing some of the artist's most evocative,

yet controversial works,

painted in the final years of his career.

These paintings were so different in style from his early works

that critics thought Turner had lost his mind.

Many lay uncatalogued and ignored for over a century after his death

and this may give us a clue as to why our paintings were rejected.

All these Turners were painted between 1835 and 1845,

about the same time that the Davies Sister pictures

were supposed to have been painted.

And what I'd love to do is get really close

with a comparison here, see the techniques.

The thing that is so surprising about them,

I mean, Turner was painting these, what, in the early Victorian years.

And the paintings then were all,

you know, they are painted of things that look as they should look.

They're very figurative they're very literal, aren't they?

And these are madly impressionistic, aren't they?

They were shocking at the time.

I mean, this was cutting edge stuff

and some people just didn't understand it.

Take this picture here, The Snowstorm.

One critic in particular said it was like soapsuds and whitewash.

Absolutely mortified Turner.

But it is the most remarkable painting.

It's kind of nature unleashed, isn't it?

And you feel you're sort of sucked into the vortex of it.

You can almost feel it.

This a portrait of nature at its most raw.

I mean, when you compare how Turner handled this scene,

you know, a ship in distress,

compared to other artists of the period, it's mind-blowing.

But I have to say, put Beacon Light next to The Snowstorm

and all sorts of comparisons begin to become obvious.

That explosion of light, the bright white,

that seems to suffuse the picture in both paintings.

You feel that, you sense that.

So, on stylistic grounds,

you're pretty sure Beacon Light is a Turner, on those grounds alone?

We've got further to go, but this is a very comfortable comparison.

I've been doing some digging into Turner's relationship with Mrs Booth.

Records tell us she was around 35

and twice widowed when she met Turner.

He was 20 years older, and at the height of his fame.

He'd stay here incognito,

assuming the name Mr Booth.

Margate was a far cry from the respectable London art scene,

where the hoi polloi came to get up to things they perhaps shouldn't.

It was a place that suited Turner.

As the son of a Covent Garden barber,

he was never quite comfortable in high society.

But I've discovered Turner's secret life didn't sit well

with the more straight laced set at the Royal Academy.

Now, this is written by Charles Turner - no relation -

who was one of Turner's engravers.

Now he's a bit miffed because even though he knew Turner for 50 years

he knew nothing about Mrs Booth.

And he went to meet her after Turner had died.

He says, "Went to see Mrs Booth, the female Mr Turner resided with.

"Exactly like a fat cook, and not a well-educated woman.

"Everyone to their taste!!!"

Three exclamation marks.

"What a pity so great a man in talent

"should not have made a more ladylike choice.

"He could not have introduced her to his friends."

Now, already, you get the sense that this is clearly not

a flattering portrait of Mrs Booth.

He wholeheartedly disapproves of her

and is very snobbish and snooty about her.

Now, this is written in the 1890s, so some years after Turner died.

Listen to this.

"His errors," that is Turner's errors,

"appear more coarse and gross,

"give more acute pain to our sense of propriety because they seem more degrading.

"In Turner's conduct, in this respect, there were two offences,

"one against morality and the other against good taste."

Now that attitude to Mrs Booth and to Turner

seems to have hung around like a bad smell

even, I would say, possibly as far as the committee in 1956

and the association of those paintings with Mrs Booth

may well have tainted them, in their minds,

far from giving them a kind of genuine ownership, may well have actually had the reverse effect.

So we know what the scholars of the past thought of our paintings

but what about the scholars of today?

To find out we've come to Tate Britain,

home of the Turner Bequest.

Turner declared that on his death

all his unsold works should be given to the nation.

300 oils and 30,000 watercolours and sketches

from a career spanning six decades.

We're meeting two Turner authorities who've studied these works meticulously,

but they hold opposing views about the Davies sisters' paintings.

Martin Butlin is former Keeper of the Historic British Collection here at the Tate.

He's been immersed in the artist's work for half a century.

Martin co-wrote the Catalogue Raisonne which lists all known Turner works.

But it describes the paintings owned by the Davies sisters as fakes.

His opinion is going to be vital if we're going to overturn that ruling.

Martin, when it comes to the paintings

that belong to Gwendoline Davies, you've got a problem, with those?

Yes.

In the end it just came down to the fact we didn't think they were good enough

and didn't look quite like what we thought a Turner should look like.

Ian Warrell is a senior curator

who's published widely on the artist.

Having been a Turner specialist for nearly 30 years

he also knows how to spot the genuine article.

Ian's in the process of re-examining some questioned Turners

for a forthcoming exhibition.

It was he who brought the rejected paintings to our attention.

These pictures have been rejected by scholars

on a stylistic grounds,

what do you think?

For me, they do look like genuine Turners.

They're the kind of sketches he was making in Margate in the 1840s

and they fit very logically into the kinds of things

we have in the Turner Bequest.

Is part of the problem with these paintings where they came from?

The fact that these may have belonged to Mrs Booth?

I think it made people more suspicious.

So would you describe these pictures

as having been perceived as murky Turners then?

I think they would always have been in the sort of shadows, if you like.

They're pictures that people,

because of the Margate and the Mrs Booth connection

didn't feel confident in asserting were genuine

and couldn't necessarily see

how they fitted into the rest of his career.

Is there some idea that Mrs Booth should never have had these paintings?

In a way, she should not have had them

because he wanted all his paintings to go to the nation.

If he wanted her to have paintings,

actually positively wanted her to have paintings,

he should have put it in his will.

It's a delicate point because his will doesn't go into great detail,

so exactly what Turner was leaving to the nation is a little imprecise.

All the works that Turner had in his possession when he died

should have come to the nation.

That, in a way, was the first moral blow perhaps. The first...

In what way? You think she might have stolen them?

I think she may have, as it were, appropriated them,

or regarded them as hers.

But that doesn't make them any less by Turner?

No, no, it doesn't,

but it's always there in the back of your mind.

When the bequest was eventually resolved,

what they agreed was that it would be the contents of the main studio in the centre of London

that became national property.

So it is inevitable that things that were on Mrs Booth's own property,

in her home, that she could assume that they were hers.

So there isn't actually a kind of definite moment when Turner gives them to her

but I don't think you could either say that she stole them.

Why is there this problem with these paintings having come from Mrs Booth?

Well, I think it has in some way tainted them,

-just by association.

-So how has it tainted them then?

Well, just that it's related to an indecent relationship

and it rubbed off.

Martin was saying very clearly

he had a problem first and foremost with the way the paintings looked,

but in addition to that it was quite clear

that the illicit relationship between Mrs Booth and Turner

had tainted the paintings.

There has to be a less subjective way of looking at these paintings, there just has to be.

We need to take a much more clear-headed view

of what these paintings are, and where they've come from.

Back at the National Museum of Wales

Adam is using imaging techniques to see through the layers of paint

in the hope that he might reveal more clues that could tell us

whether the rejected works are genuine.

It's been suspected that Margate Jetty was once part of a larger painting.

X-Ray photography can detect whether the canvas has been cut down.

Infra-red imagining can reveal underlying layers of paint,

under drawing or changes of mind by the artist.

We're meeting at my gallery to interpret Adam's findings.

Now Adam has made some fascinating discoveries

using the various imaging techniques on the rejected paintings.

Got here an X-ray of Margate Jetty

and he's proved that it was cut down on all four sides,

which means, as we suspected,

that it was once part of a much larger painting.

That is real progress,

because I've always had a problem with this format,

it hasn't quite worked,

the strokes are too broad for something on that small scale.

That would explain it!

And that would explain, presumably,

why the committee back in 1956 rejected it.

Yeah, it didn't work as a composition.

But actually we can take this a stage further

and we can imagine what it might have looked like because...

we've got a watercolour here,

by Turner, of the same scene,

also done in the 1840s

and I've had a bit of a fiddle around on the Photoshop and look.

Brilliant,

so that water colour's almost like a preparation for the oil painting.

That is just brilliant.

Thing is though, why would anyone want

to cut down a painting by Turner?

It's a really good point,

but people did cut down pictures.

I mean, that might have been cut down because it was damaged,

or possibly someone wanted to create two Turners out of one.

I mean, it's happened before.

We see cut down pictures like that quite often, unfortunately.

But let me show you a more exciting discovery

because Adam has done an infra-red image of Beacon Light.

And I can show that to you here.

What are we supposed to be seeing there?

Hang on, hang on. It's looming up, there we go.

Oh, I see. So that's what, a tower, a lighthouse?

A tower, a lighthouse, quite possibly.

I think it'll make more sense if I drop it into the painting like this.

-Oh, it couldn't be clearer.

-Look at that!

Yeah. So if Turner had painted Beacon Light

he originally had it with a lighthouse in the top of the cliff

then he changed his mind and painted it out.

But where I think this is going to be really helpful

is in actually helping us find out where Beacon Light was painted.

Do you know, that could be of real benefit

because I've always had a problem.

All the other pictures are painted around Margate, Deal, you know,

areas within the vicinity.

But this was identified,

by a dealer I believe, as a view of the Isle of Wight.

Absolutely.

When the Davies sisters bought it,

it was described as Beacon Fire The Needles.

Now the Needles are those enormous cliffs at the end of the Isle of Wight

and if I drop in Beacon Light next to it,

you can see for the same scene, what do you think?

The cliff is a completely different shape, isn't it?

Yeah, and it also can't be there because it just doesn't fit

with that period of Turner's life,

cos we know in the late 1820s he went to the Isle of Wight

and his style was very different then,

it was far more figurative, far more readable.

You know, whereas Beacon Light is very different.

It's consistent with the work he was producing in the 1840s,

far more impressionistic and wild.

So when the committee looked at this painting, back in 1956,

they will have assumed it was from the Isle of Wight,

from the earlier period of Turner's works,

so to them it will have looked all wrong.

Yeah. It will be yet another reason to reject it, I think.

Now I agree with Philip,

I think this picture Beacon Light makes much more sense

if it's painted around Margate in the 1840s,

and for what it's worth I went to school in that area.

In fact I used to do geography on those very beaches, in the rain,

and I reckon with this extra little clue now, the second lighthouse,

I've got some ideas as to where this might actually have been painted.

Bendor and I are heading to the Kent coast

to see if we can find the view depicted in Beacon Light.

If we can tie its location to other works painted by Turner

when he was living in the area with Mrs Booth,

our case will be greatly strengthened.

Now I've got an old shipping map here,

because if Turner painted Beacon Light around the Thanet coastline,

there's really only two places it could have been.

There's a lighthouse here at North Foreland,

but the topography of the cliffs doesn't work,

there's only one lighthouse,

or South Foreland where we are now,

where we've got much better cliffs

and crucially we've got two lighthouses.

Ah, just as we've seen in Beacon Light, in the picture itself.

-Yeah.

-One hidden, the other not.

Absolutely. So we've got the main light behind us,

which is called the High Light,

and then down there at the edge of the cliff

there's another light called the Lower Light

and the reason behind having two is that on these treacherous seas

near the Goodwin Sands,

that ships would have to line both lights up

and then they would know they were safe.

OK, so, we need to find the viewpoint

of this scene that Turner chose.

Yeah, well, it involves a bit of a hike down there.

No problem.

The two lights of South Foreland had been painted by Turner before.

Earlier in his career in 1827

he depicted them standing high on top of the cliffs,

from the vantage point of a boat on the stormy sea.

But are the white cliffs of South Foreland

the same ones we think Turner painted in Beacon Light?

Can't you just slow down a bit?

Come on, keep up.

Turner would have painted this in a hurry, we can't hang around.

You're destroying my shoes.

Yeah, I think next time you need to come...

perhaps not in a suit.

At last, our efforts are rewarded.

So what do you think?

I can see exactly what you mean.

The cliffs follow the angle exactly of the picture.

Yep. This has to be the spot, I'm convinced.

We've got the two light houses, the one Turner painted out at the top,

which today is obscured by all those trees

which weren't there when Turner was painting.

And the second lighthouse here,

flaming a light which today is powered by a lamp,

but in Turner's time would have been a flame.

And the other thing,

this is exactly the sort of place you could imagine Turner standing

and he's got all the drama around him.

He's got the sea on the left, he's got that,

that great fin of a cliff pushing out,

but more than that, this shows that Beacon Light is here,

it's not the Isle of Wight.

This pins it to this place,

when Turner was living in the area with Mrs Booth.

We've cracked it.

Our investigation is proving there are strong links between

our paintings and Turner,

so why has the art world turned its back on them?

Back in London, in the archives of the Tate gallery,

Bendor has been delving into a side of the artist

that was hidden for decades.

He's warned me to be prepared for a bit of a shock.

These are some of the 300 of Turner's own sketchbooks

we have here in the Tate,

and I've assembled some of them together

just to give an idea of what some people call the dark side of Turner,

and what I'm referring to basically is what was called his sordid and sensuous nature.

Oh!

So, shall I start with some of the less rude drawings, shall we call them?

So we're going to be looking at some naughty pictures

is this what you're trying to tell me?

I suppose it's called erotica, really, isn't it?

So this is a lovely little sketchbook

from his trip to Switzerland

and on the first page there we've got two figures in bed

which, I don't know, is that a man or a woman?

Looks like two women to me.

They've definitely been...

Clearly been very busy.

So, Turner was just...

How extraordinary, I thought he just did landscapes but there we are.

So what, he, these are prostitutes one assumes,

that he painted on his travels?

It's thought that he did visit brothels,

and there are also tales of him going down to view

what were called "sailor's women" in activities.

This is one of my favourites here,

all sorts of legs in funny positions.

And it's actually quite hard to work out what's going on there,

but as you say, two legs here, mmm.

Shall I lead you into something a little bit more revealing?

I never thought when I got up this morning this is what I'd be doing.

Anyway, lead on.

Quite graphic, aren't they?

They are.

I mean I don't think we can show these on television.

Does Mrs Booth feature anywhere in these?

Possibly. This is one of the drawings from the Margate sketchbook.

Are there any of her from

a slightly more conventional, flattering angle?

Yes, there is one here

which Turner's most recent biographer

has said is of Mrs Booth.

Now that's not the most erotic drawing in the world

but it's quite sensitively done,

it feels like it's someone he knows.

Yeah, has a real charm.

As far as Turner was concerned these were all secret,

but after he died, of course,

when he leaves all these sketchbooks to the nation,

it's another story and he has, some would say,

the misfortune to have his bequest, particularly these sketchbooks,

catalogued by an artist and an art critic called John Ruskin

who was actually a great champion of Turner

but he was also deeply prudish himself.

So what does Ruskin do?

Well, in 1862 he writes a letter

saying that he destroyed some of these drawings

and some of them he kept, packaged in an envelope on which he wrote,

"Kept as evidence of failure of mind."

So he thought Turner was some kind of degenerate

or mental deviant because of these drawings?

Yeah,

and you get this kind of whitewash of this side of his life.

I had no idea about this side of Turner's character,

but what I am getting a clear idea about

is that anything that is associated with this part of his life,

his illicit relationship with Mrs Booth, these naughty pictures,

they've been airbrushed out of this life

because they've been considered degenerate or deviant

or just undesirable,

and any paintings, you know, from Mrs Booth

that are associated with this side of Turner's character

are questionable and kind of pushed to one side.

Yep.

I wonder what the Davies sisters would have made of all of this.

Why were they drawn to paintings with such a controversial past?

To find out I'm travelling to Montgomeryshire

where Gwendoline and Margaret lived.

Thanks to a family fortune

forged during the industrialisation of Wales,

the Davies sisters were among the richest heiresses in Britain.

But they were different from other young ladies of their class.

Brought up to be devoutly religious,

they lived quiet, sheltered lives and they never married.

What I find so surprising

about the fact that the Davies sisters collected,

not only Turners but Turners with this provenance from Mrs Booth is,

well, I mean, they had a very strict, puritanical upbringing,

they were teetotallers,

they had a very moral view of life,

and here was Turner and Mrs Booth,

you know, I mean, it was an illicit relationship,

a relationship out of wedlock, she was his mistress.

It's a very strange coming together of two different worlds.

The Davies sisters grew up here at Plas Dinam.

Lord and Lady Davies have agreed to show me their family archives.

Well, that's my Aunt Margaret, really as I remember her.

That's a rather lovely one of her actually,

because you can see the character in the face,

even though she's an old lady by then.

I guess she would have been about this age

-when she was told that the Turners were not in fact Turners.

-Yes.

Here they are as young ladies looking very elegant.

It's almost difficult to believe they had such

a strict, religious, almost puritanical upbringing, didn't they?

Yes, three times to chapel on Sunday

and no alcohol, no drinking throughout their lives

and drink not allowed in the house.

They didn't participate in high society and high life at all.

No high jinks.

No, no high jinks.

Not for the Davies sisters.

It's easy to get an impression of them

that they were reclusive, like little mice,

but actually during the First World War they went to France

and they ran or they worked in this place called La Cantine de Dames Anglaise,

the Canteen of the English Ladies.

Yes, in their journals

they refer to the sound of machine guns and the sound of the bombs.

It was only a few miles from the front,

so they were sending those soldiers

on their way with coffee and cigarettes,

probably for the last time.

I mean, it really was tough stuff, I think.

So they were a bit more worldly than perhaps one is led to believe.

Oh, I think so, yes, absolutely.

The war had a profound effect on the Davies sisters.

For several years they stopped collecting art.

Gwendoline said, "We simply cannot in the face of the appalling need everywhere."

It was Turner and Mrs Booth who reignited their passion

when, in 1922, Beacon Light came up for sale.

But did their eagerness to collect Mrs Booth's paintings mean the sisters were taken advantage of?

I've been mulling over the letter sent on behalf of Margaret Davies

when news came in that the pictures had been rejected,

and particularly the line, "Someone has pulled off a fast one."

So who could have pulled off a fast one?

Whether I like it or not I've got to consider the thought.

I mean, could it have been, for example

some unscrupulous dealer who saw the two single sisters,

picture hungry, loads of money, as easy prey,

or could they have been pictures that were fakes

and had been in circulation for years before that?

To find out we need to establish precisely why, when and how

the Davies sisters' paintings first came to the art market.

Bendor and I have come to Christie's,

the prestigious international auction house.

£22 million.

It was in this very saleroom that the rejected Turners were first sold.

The original sale catalogues still exist

and provide vital evidence about the provenance of our paintings.

All of our pictures can be traced back to two auctions,

which took place here at Christies.

First was in 1865 and the second was in 1909.

Now, for both sales,

the pictures can be linked back to one guy,

a man called Daniel John Pound

and he was Mrs Booth's son from her first marriage

and if you read this little bit of marketing guff up here,

it seems like the sale was quite an event.

"The following splendid works of JMW Turner

"have never before been before the public

"and are in a perfectly pure and genuine state."

I like that phrase, "genuine state."

I think what's interesting here is to try and figure out

why Daniel John Pound or Mrs Booth were selling these pictures.

And it turns out that

although Turner was a really rich man during his lifetime,

he could also be a little bit tight-fisted

and Mrs Booth said that, apart from their first year together,

he never contributed a single shilling

towards their living expenses.

For a man of his wealth, that's pretty unacceptable, isn't it?

Mrs Booth certainly thought so

and in fact in Turner's will, he left her 150 guineas a year,

which she felt certainly wasn't enough

and she decided to sue the executors for six years of board and washing.

It sounds as though Mrs Booth got a pretty rough deal, didn't she?

-Mm-hm.

-But at least we know why she sold the pictures.

We've got very good provenance here.

I mean, it's there, in black and white.

And here is Margate Jetty in the 1909 sale

and then here Beacon On The Rock,

as it was then called, Beacon Light.

But the only one we can't be sure about is Off Margate

and that's because the dimensions don't exactly match up.

But of course that can be explained by the fact

-that it was cut down.

-Of course.

So, what's the problem?

The scholars who rejected our paintings have suggested

that the pictures came to the market through underground ways.

So the inference of that is pretty sinister.

They're suggesting that Daniel John Pound, Mrs Booth's son,

could have been peddling fakes.

And Daniel John Pound was a man of some considerable artistic skill.

He was an engraver, a very accomplished engraver,

and his job was to take copies of photographs of famous people

and make engraving plates which were then reproduced

in these expensive books of prints.

OK, so you've made good progress with the provenance,

-but you've introduced a figure of some concern.

-Mmm-hm.

I mean, Pound was a man who was known to be able to do copies,

I know it's miles away from Turner's style,

but could he have been counterfeiting the master's work?

It's a chilling thought

that our paintings may be the handiwork of Daniel John Pound.

To prove this, one way or another,

we need to complete our forensic investigation.

Adam has brought the samples of the Davies sisters' paintings

to Tate Britain

so that we can compare them to genuine Turner works.

Senior conservation scientist, Joyce Townsend,

has sampled hundreds of paintings in the Turner Bequest.

She's the world authority on the materials he painted with.

Her findings could fulfil our hopes,

or dash them.

If we're to spot the hand of a faker,

it's also crucial to understand how Turner painted.

Artist Tony Smibert has studied Turner's techniques.

I've asked him to demonstrate the master's tricks of the trade.

Turner started his career as a watercolourist

and this is a watercolour process to lay down a colour beginning,

which is, if you like, a basic composition.

That composition gives him the guide for everything that's going to follow.

Just start laying down the paint like this.

Oh, I see, with a rag.

Yes, and lay this colour over the whole canvas.

Soon it'll start to look a bit like a watercolour beginning by Turner.

-What even though it was in oils?

-Yes.

Turner took watercolour technique into oils

and then as a result of becoming a master of oils,

he took oil painting technique back to watercolour, revolutionised both.

So this is Beacon Light, Joyce, like we've never seen it before.

Now, tell me what you can see.

We're looking at the layer structure.

We start at the bottom, this white is the priming on the canvas.

Right on top, very, very thin, is the colour beginning.

This is when Turner quickly blocked in all the colours.

-Right.

-Then we have a very thick layer with lots of brushstrokes,

and then in this section the impasto on top.

The impasto being the final thick layer of paint.

So this is a pretty complex structure.

-I mean, is this what you'd expect to find in a Turner?

-Very much so, yes.

The way Turner worked, he could think and paint very quickly.

We know that he worked with warm colours,

then created his shapes with cool colours, and built up tonal values.

Seeing how you're working

and the spontaneity of the way you're working

that would be very hard to copy, to fake, wouldn't it?

It is, yes.

Really, only someone with enormous skill and maturity

as an artist could do the sort of things

that Turner was doing, the way that he was doing them.

What about the colours?

Can we start with that yellow? I can see a big chunk of it in there.

I know that Turner, of course, loves this yellow.

I mean, people used to rather send him up for his use of yellow.

Well, we would be very concerned if we found, for example,

-Cadmium yellow.

-The reason for that?

It wasn't invented until the very end of Turner's life,

and he never used it. I haven't found it.

And I love that type of exactitude.

Well, put us out of our misery. What type of yellow is it?

Turner's favourite yellow, Chrome yellow.

-Yes, yes. Phew, relief.

-And we can look at the blues.

And if we had something like Cerulean blue here,

then we'd be in trouble.

Wasn't invented until 1860.

OK, problem. Problem for a Turner. And the answer?

The answer is Cobalt blue.

Another one that Turner used a lot,

and he was a really early adopter.

So we can say now that there are no pigments in Beacon Light

that would suggest the hand of a later faker,

but what about the other two?

Here's Off Margate.

Here's Margate Jetty.

Same kind of structure from the bottom up. Everything is consistent.

Now, this is very flat looking. How would Turner build up texture?

The first is with thick paint which gives its own natural texture.

The next one that Turner used was to add beeswax to it. So...

-Add beeswax to the paint?

-Yeah, add beeswax to it.

It's less expensive than paint, and it means that

you can build body in and the paint looks exactly the same,

-it looks like I've added more paint.

-Oh, I see.

The third way is something called megilp, which is

linseed oil cooked up with lead and mixed with mastic varnish,

and that enables you to get texture but a softer surface.

It's a bit like a cookery lesson.

Where you've added the beeswax, it's a bit like whipped cream...

and then where you've added the megilp is more like single cream.

Yes, absolutely.

And, I mean the point is that means you've got an enormous variety

of ways you can work on the surface of the canvas.

Those who observed Turner said he was a magician with paint,

mixing up strange concoctions to conjure dazzling illusions.

So working out the ingredients in our paintings is key to proving

whether they're genuine.

One last crucial test can determine

exactly what oils and waxes are present.

Then we have to see if the results are consistent

with Turner's peculiar paint recipes.

Now, if Turner was doing this, there'd be a storm.

I feel like one of the Greek gods commanding the weather,

but let's have storm going on here.

Now, what are you doing there? Mixing the paint with the beeswax.

Yeah, with the wax, yep.

So one of the things that you might see

is waves crashing in like this here.

The wind catching the surface of the waves like this.

What if we were going to have mist coming in?

I'm going to mist the whole thing.

Yes, this has a bit of mist coming. I'm loving the power of this.

Would Turner use the same system, you know, the beeswax for waves,

megilp for clouds? Did he have a system across his paintings?

Science tells us yes. Certain weather effects he had a formula for

so you'd find the same sorts of processes

used for mist and waves and so on, in a very wide number of paintings.

So we know that Turner used all sorts of ingredients to mix his paints

but what are the sort of ingredients we wouldn't like to find?

Something that we know is 20th century, so safflower oil,

or soya oil, those kinds of things, would be a real concern here.

So if we found those,

the attribution to Turner would be dead in the water.

Absolutely, yes.

Well, shall we have a look at the graph?

We have linseed oil. These orange peaks over here.

Turner used it all the time,

so did a lot of other people in the 19th century.

It wasn't unique to him, but more interestingly, this red,

all the green peaks together, show that there's beeswax.

Ah, beeswax.

Now, that was one of his favourite tipples, wasn't it,

for mixing with his paints.

Indeed, Turner used it all the time.

You really need it if you're going to make high impasto,

and it's in the high impasto of the Beacon Light.

It's also in the background as well.

-So you find it throughout the whole picture?

-Indeed.

Now doesn't this argue for it being consistently by one hand

rather than another hand or a faker as well?

Yes, I mean, I think what we've found is that,

of all the areas we've sampled the results are very consistent,

so it all adds up to Turner so far.

-That's good news, no?

-Yeah, very.

-Isn't it?

What we've managed to establish today is entirely new evidence.

The science tells us that all the materials used in these pictures

are consistent with the materials used by Turner.

Furthermore, it also tells us that in the case of Beacon Light,

it's almost certainly all by the same hand,

and all the evidence adds up to that hand being Turner.

The day of reckoning has finally come.

We've gathered at the National Museum of Wales,

where the paintings will be subjected to a re-trial.

Martin Butlin has agreed to re-examine

the Davies sisters paintings, which he last rejected 28 years ago.

Today, art history could be made.

Finally, we've got here.

If Martin says, "Yes," we're home and dry, but the problem is,

Martin wrote the Catalogue Raisonne,

and in it he published these pictures as wrong, as not by Turner.

So we're going to need the man who actually said, "No"

to say, "Yes". Now in the art world, that's a big ask.

I've no idea how it's going to go.

With all the work that we've done I hope, you know, technically,

we can prove to Martin that they're by Turner,

and emotionally we can strip away this whole taint

by association with Mrs Booth.

Are you feeling optimistic now we've got to this final stage?

I am certainly, yes.

No, I, I am optimistic,

there's always that little element of doubt

but we're definitely optimistic that it's going to go well.

-How are you feeling?

-Really excited, really excited, yes.

I shall be very thrilled if it goes the way I think it should.

It was rotten for Margaret to be told

that some of them weren't Turners,

and I'd say hip-hip-hooray for her if they turned out to be right.

But have we done enough to convince Martin?

When academics come together

to make crunch decisions about the authenticity of a painting,

this is not something that's normally done before an audience.

This is something that happens behind closed doors.

We have access to a process which very rarely does one witness.

Now, the painting on the left, this one of Margate Jetty,

was accused of being a later copy.

Basically, it was thought, you know,

it just looked too late to be by Turner.

It is a very peculiar sort of format and size.

How much do you think could be explained

by the fact that this is a fragment

and should be indeed seen as something on a much larger scale?

It could well be a fragment,

but, I mean, a fragment quite of what?

What do you add to it? What do you put on each side?

I think if you compare it

with the watercolour which shows Margate Jetty,

I think then it begins to make sense as a composition.

Shall we look at Off Margate? Listed in the Catalogue Raisonne

as work no longer thought to be by Turner.

What was the primary problem with this for you?

It doesn't really make much sense,

particularly with the bits that run across the middle of the picture.

And it's now very two dimensional

but it could be just a question of the condition.

And that brings us to Beacon Light.

This is a painting that you felt was started by Turner...

..but completed by a faker.

There are certain elements in the picture

which don't look like the original Turner.

I've seen the results of analysis from the paint in the foreground

and from the background and they match.

They're very much something that Turner would have used

for this kind of paint.

The paint would be consistent, but the look of it to me isn't.

This is not what we expected.

Do you know, I thought he'd react a bit more positively

after all the work that we've done.

I felt, and I know Philip felt, that our argument was convincing

but look, it's still going on.

He wants more time, he wants to sleep on it,

you know, his reputation is at stake,

Turner's reputation is at stake.

There's so much riding on this that he wants time to think about it

and that's not unreasonable...

..but it's not what we hoped for.

A few days later, Martin Butlin is ready to give his verdict.

So what do you think Martin's going to say?

I know what I think he should say, but I have to say, after Cardiff,

after that meeting in front of those paintings,

I'm doubtful.

You know, you read the vibes, don't you?

His whole kind of body language was pretty negative,

but you know, he's slept on it, he's had a couple of days,

so, you know, let's be positive. Let's hope.

Martin, you've had a couple of days

to think about it, to mull it all over.

All our work has led up to this point, so no pressure!

What do you think of the paintings?

Well, first of all, I think an important thing

about all three of the pictures

is they are not as they left the artist.

Two of them have been cut down,

one has been very badly squashed, in fact,

by the relining process, so what we're looking at

is not what whoever the artist is left them like.

Well, we'd like to know who you do think the artist is.

Let's take them one at a time. Let's start with Off Margate.

Off Margate is the one that's been squashed flat.

Unfortunately, this painting is a ghost.

Whose ghost? It could well be by Turner, but a ruined Turner.

If you were publishing your Catalogue Raisonne again,

would you actually put it in,

but then add a second or third paragraph

saying what you have just said about condition?

I think one probably would, yes.

So that's a "by Turner?"

It's a "probably by Turner," but I wouldn't stake my life on it.

All right. Let's move on.

Margate Jetty?

Now, that I'm much happier about,

particularly since it's been demonstrated

that it could be a fragment from a composition,

much like the watercolour in the Courtauld Institute.

What's your verdict?

I think in this case it's yes.

I think it's possibly suffered a bit.

So you think Margate Jetty is by Turner.

Well, it's the remains of a Turner, yes.

We'll take that as a yes. That sounds pretty good to me.

OK. Finally, Beacon Light.

I have to say a picture I've become very attached to

over the last few months.

Do you think that this is all by Turner or as has been published,

that this is likely to be the work of two hands,

a faker adding to Turner?

I now think it's almost certainly all by Turner.

Oh my gosh, that's fantastic.

That is absolutely...I was convinced you were not going to say that.

Well, we do occasionally change our minds

when we have the right evidence, and it was 25 years ago or longer

that we last thought about those pictures.

So before you came in here today, we had three paintings in Cardiff.

the legacy of the wonderful Davies sisters,

which were rather unloved and languishing.

Now we have one painting, Off Margate,

that could well be by Turner, more likely by Turner than not.

Margate Jetty by Turner, Beacon Light by Turner.

-Yeah.

-I mean that's fantastic progress.

I only wish the Davies sisters were here.

I mean, that act of generosity that was thrown back in their face,

has today been rectified.

And now their paintings can hang on the wall with pride.

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