Constable Fake or Fortune?

18,500,000.

The art world, where paintings change hands for fortunes.

Selling at 95 million.

But for every known masterpiece,

there may be another still waiting to be discovered.

Oh, my word.

They're known as sleepers.

International art dealer Philip Mould hunts them down.

In the past we looked at pictures.

Now, almost, you can look through them.

Using cutting-edge science and investigative research,

we've teamed up to find long-lost works by the great masters.

Wow.

The problem is, not every painting is quite what it seems.

When these paintings were thought to be genuine, how much were they worth?

Millions.

It's a journey that can end in joy...

-Isn't that great?

-That's amazing.

..or bitter disappointment.

I can't get my head round it, I really can't.

In this episode, we take on a doubly challenging investigation,

as we try and prove that not one, but two paintings

are missing works by one of Britain's best loved artists -

John Constable.

Boy, he can paint.

The trail takes us all the way from Britain to America.

And it plunges us into the murky world of 19th century fakes.

The picture had been pretty well repainted by a forger.

It's a journey with more than a few surprises.

SIREN WAILS

How incredible!

But can we do enough to persuade the experts and the art market

to anoint two new paintings with those magic words

"by John Constable"?

If I had to come down on one side of the line or the other,

I would say...

Three more for us.

At the end of the last series, we asked you to contact us

if you thought you might have an undiscovered masterpiece

languishing in your attic or under your bed.

How about a bit of Picasso?

-Found in a toolbox, apparently.

-A toolbox?!

'We were inundated with responses.'

Have you seen this? Possible Rubens.

Hundreds of you got in touch about

pictures claiming to be by some of the world's greatest artists.

-Possible Turner.

-Someone here thinks they've got a work

by the great Sir Joshua Reynolds.

One name, though, kept cropping up - Constable.

And two possible works by this quintessential English artist

stopped us in our tracks.

One arrived on Philip's doorstep after a journey from America.

This picture has just arrived

all the way from Detroit.

It belongs to a man called Tom Toppin, and he believes

that it's by John Constable.

And I have to say, just having taken it out of the case...

..he's got a point. I can see where he's coming from.

The other was closer to home, in west London.

A family heirloom owned by Mrs Gilly Dance.

-Hello.

-Fiona, how lovely to meet you.

-Lovely to meet you.

Complete with a promising little sign.

"Yarmouth Jetty,

"1776. John Constable, RA, 1837."

Do you know if this is in the Catalogue Raisonne,

-the list of Constable's works?

-I don't believe it is,

I don't believe it is. I don't think anybody's looked at it or really...

-Offered an opinion on it?

-No.

My father-in-law bought it in 1942,

then my husband was given it in 1975

and then when I moved, it was under my bed.

It was under your bed?

-Under my bed, in a crate.

-A John Constable under your bed!

And one never really thought very much about it.

One never really imagined that it was a Constable.

Oh, really? You didn't think it was,

-even though it says "John Constable" there?

-No.

-Why not?

I don't know why not, but I just didn't.

-Too good to be true?

-Too good to be true, too good to be true.

And what about here? It says here,

"From the collection of Miss Spedding, a friend of the artist's wife."

-So do you know anything about Miss Spedding?

-Well, I do

because there's a quotation on the back of the picture.

-So can we take it down?

-Certainly.

-Have a look?

Certainly, yes, do.

While we take down Gilly's picture, over in the gallery

Philip takes a closer look at the other possible Constable painting.

The first and most obvious observation is,

this is a sketch or a first idea for a composition.

But oddly, it's all the better for that.

There's a feeling of spontaneous observation,

of really having encountered the movement of the waves,

or the activity of the clouds,

and then attempting to get it down in some shorthand.

A picture like this might never have been intended for display.

It may have started life as a rough draft,

with the artist working out his plan in oil paint.

But even sketches and scribbles of great artists are highly prized.

If this painting can be proved to be by John Constable,

it's worth probably £300,000,

perhaps more, if the condition is good.

Meanwhile, in Gilly's flat,

the back of Yarmouth Jetty is yielding a host of clues.

Look, there's a whole life story back here.

What's this? "Constable writing to Leslie

"on December 30th, 1836, says,

"'We are almost alone, only our friends Mr and Miss Spedding.'"

-Yes.

-"'Very old and much esteemed friends of my poor wife.'"

-We don't know who put that there.

-Don't know who put that there.

It's always been on it since it's been in my possession,

-our possession.

-So that's a good start.

-Yes.

And then this one here.

No, I can't make out that word.

"Yarmouth Jetty by Constable"...

something... "Spedding".

It's Spedding, it's definitely something.

It's either property of Miss Spedding or something...

Is this an address here? Sussex.

-Is it?

-Mmm. That says Sussex.

You've got very good eyesight, Fiona.

And what's this here? Hang on.

"Polishing a picture."

Oh, so this is how to look after the picture.

It says here, "After six weeks should the picture chill or bloom,

"the picture should be washed with cold water and a sponge."

-I'm not sure about that.

-Good gracious!

I don't know if that tells us anything about the provenance,

-but it's fascinating nonetheless!

-Now we know how to clean our pictures.

Well, there's lots to go on, that's for sure.

With two potential Constables to investigate,

Fiona and I meet at the National Gallery to compare notes

and learn more about the artist.

This is the room of the greatest British riches

in the National Gallery here.

'Where better to start than with his most famous work The Hay Wain?'

Gosh, it's an idyllic vision of rural England, isn't it?

It's so familiar to us that that's actually a problem, isn't it?

It is the painting that's launched a thousand jigsaw puzzles

and tea towels and chocolate boxes.

And yet there's a reason why it's so familiar to us,

because it is just such a perfect rendering,

such a complete expression of the English countryside.

Today, Constable's most ambitious paintings

command the highest prices at auction.

Lot 37. Constable's Lock.

Fair warning, at £20 million.

But in his lifetime, he made a far more modest income.

The son of a mill owner, Constable was born in 1776

and raised in Suffolk.

Yet his ability to evoke the essence of English nature on canvas

only began to be widely appreciated after his death in 1837.

As his reputation grew, so did the number of imitators.

But none possessed his unique gifts.

I mean, take for example the fisherman, pushing his way

through the foliage in the bank.

This is something he must have observed, something he's seen.

I mean, it's a sensual experience

that only someone who's actually seen it and loves it can impart,

providing, of course, they can paint, and boy, he can paint.

And the sky is stunning, isn't it?

But of course, you know, the sky again is a wonderful example of

Constable the portrayer of specific nature.

On the left-hand side you've got darkness,

on the right-hand side, you've got billowing light, you know,

a typical English day, you know.

A summer's day which could go either way. I mean,

this is what gives so much authenticity to Constable.

He has turned a cottage with a cart

into something that can compete with the great works of the Renaissance.

It's a bit daunting, isn't it?

Because we're trying to find not just one new Constable but two.

But this picture helps us.

I mean, for all of its magnificence and its sort of seamless beauty,

you can actually see the working method.

If you cast your eye down to the bottom middle of the picture,

you will see a ghostly form.

Oh, yeah.

Constable was so meticulous in his approach to painting that he even

created full-size working sketches

for pictures like The Hay Wain.

He had planned to include

a boy on a horse in the scene,

but ended up painting it out in the finished picture.

So that change of heart that you can see there,

it's like a window into what Constable was thinking,

and into the process of how he put this painting together

and that's what we need to look for in our paintings.

Yeah, this gives us a lead.

Our head of research, Dr Bendor Grosvenor, has already started

the hunt for evidence, and we're all getting together

-at Philip's gallery.

-You know how we're always banging on

about looking at the back of a painting.

Well, we've lucked out with Yarmouth Jetty

because it's full of labels and hints and clues.

When I examined the painting at Gilly's flat,

there was the name Spedding on the back

and then, rather frustratingly, just a fragment of an address - "Sussex".

I've done a little bit more research into that Spedding label

and it's proving very useful.

She lived at a place called

Sweet Haws Grange,

which was in Sussex.

Now, that's useful for us because Miss Spedding's father

was called Anthony Spedding, he was a lawyer in the 19th century

and he lived in a house on Hampstead Heath, and I don't know

if you can recognise the artist of that picture?

Heh! That's by John Constable.

It is indeed Constable, and there's a further Constable connection here

because Anthony Spedding's business partner, Charles Bicknell,

was John Constable's father-in-law.

Of course, and Miss Spedding's father.

So that's real progress. We've now got a flesh and blood connection

between the picture and Constable.

The thing is, can we establish that Miss Spedding actually owned

any Constable paintings and in particular, of course,

owned Yarmouth Jetty?

The provenance actually is really very encouraging

and I have to say, I believe this picture

but there's a problem because at first glance it looks like a sketch

and then you get up close and it looks more solid.

I mean, it's sort of almost neither one thing nor the other.

And the thing is, Gilly's is not the only Yarmouth Jetty.

There's a Yarmouth Jetty in the Tate,

which is authentically by Constable, it's in the Catalogue Raisonne,

-and it's a lot more detailed than our one.

-Hmm.

And what's going to make our job a little bit harder still

is that there are in fact

three Yarmouth Jetties which are accepted as genuine Constables.

But the curious thing is, there's no preparatory sketch for those

three pictures. So the question is,

is our picture Constable's original Yarmouth Jetty sketch?

Well, I reckon if we can get this picture through as by Constable,

it could be valued at over £100,000.

I'm sure Gilly will be thrilled with that.

When it comes to our other picture, A Sea Beach, Brighton,

Philip obviously likes what he sees.

But we need to know more about the painting's history,

so we contact the owner in America, Tom Toppin.

I bought it in the early '90s from Sotheby's

and I was advised by one of the experts in the Paintings Department

that it was a Constable oil sketch,

listed as "attributed"

because there was some concern about the provenance. I was told

that it originally had come from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,

which piqued my interest.

We ended up being a successful bidder at £40,000.

We got a fantastic bargain

if it turns out to be by Constable.

Otherwise, I have a very large embarrassing loss

if it turns out not to be. It was a major gamble.

Matter of fact, my wife keeps reminding me about that.

I'm really getting to like Sea Beach, Brighton, Tom Toppin's picture.

I mean, we know for a considerable period of its life,

it was owned by one of the most prestigious museums in the world,

The Museum of Fine Arts at Boston.

OK, they flogged it,

but for a time it was taken dead seriously as a work by Constable.

But can we find a reason to take it seriously again?

Now, I don't like to be the bearer of bad news here,

but there are an awful lot of fake Constables out there,

and our two pictures share one significant thing in common.

And that is that the subjects of both

were included in a set of prints by Constable

called The English Landscape Scenery

and this set of prints

was of course prime material for Constable forgers.

So we'll need to find some pretty compelling evidence, then,

if we're going to establish that

Yarmouth Jetty and A Sea Beach, Brighton are the real deal.

With science playing an increasingly important role in determining

whether a painting is real or fake,

we're going to meet Sarah Cove,

a conservator who specialises

in the technical analysis of John Constable's work.

-Sarah, hello.

-Hello.

-Nice to see you.

-Nice to meet you.

-Hi, Philip. How are you?

-Very good to see you.

Right, this is it. Shall I put it on the easel?

'She's been taking a closer look at both our pictures,

'Yarmouth Jetty and A Sea Beach, Brighton, searching for evidence

'of the artist's unique style - even if it lies deep beneath the surface.'

It's very brown, isn't it?

That's partly because it's got quite a discoloured varnish on it,

which is on the whole surface of the painting

and the varnish will particularly

affect the sky and the sea,

which obviously is the majority of the painting.

The subtle blue, purple,

pink tones that would be used in the sky

are completely knocked out by the discoloured varnish.

So it looks very flat

and it has this kind of brown overall appearance.

-It looks to me like it's sat in a pub for 50 years.

-But...

-Yes.

-With people smoking around it.

Yes, I can kind of see through the varnish in a way,

to think, well, if that's cleaned,

that's going to come up more than likely a certain colour.

For example, if this was by Constable, I would expect

that the whites in particular

would come up as an absolutely more or less pure chalky white

because he was using things like egg white mixed into his paint

with a very small amount of oil,

which meant that the white was almost like white chalk.

Can't we use that trick you use in the gallery, Philip,

where you just get cotton wool and a bit of spit

and have a go at some of this? Can't we do that now?

-No.

-Oh. Why not?

No, because this is, this is a proper operation.

We have to actually cut through discoloured yellow varnish

-in order to get there.

-I know, just to give us a bit of an idea.

It would freshen it up, perhaps a little bit.

We could actually... Yes, we can do it with spit.

-You see? I've been paying attention!

-Except that...

Except that on some paintings,

particularly modern paintings,

you potentially can end up with the paint coming off on the spit.

This is not something I would recommend viewers to do at home.

Right. OK.

The areas that will be most affected, really, are the dark areas

because the fact that the varnish is quite opacified is almost

putting, like a whitish veil on the surface, so...

-Oh, goodness me.

-Gosh, it's dirty!

-That's the surface dirt.

-It's looking better, though.

-Yeah, that's the surface dirt.

That's basically soot from fires in the past

and also airborne pollutants from car exhausts.

But you can already see more coming through now, can't you?

-Like the shadows here.

-You can see more depth of tone.

-This stroke here.

-That was a good call.

'Looking through the old varnish

'might bring us closer to the artist's original colour scheme,

'but Sarah thinks she can also see evidence

'of more than one hand at work.'

What you can actually see

are traces of what appears to be some kind of very old repainting.

It's quite opaque,

it's not at all in character with the rest of the original paint

and I would suspect that it would have been put on to try and

make the painting look much less sketchy than it does now.

In other words, at some time

this painting was given a substantial makeover.

'Sarah needs to spend more time studying A Sea Beach, Brighton

'under the microscope, while our other picture, Yarmouth Jetty,

'poses even bigger questions.'

So, first impressions?

Uh...

First impressions are that

there's obviously something going on there, in the middle of the painting

which looks like possibly

-a sail from some...

-You mean something underneath the paint?

Yes, yes.

Something that was originally in this composition,

which has been painted out,

but it's become more visible,

partly because oil paint becomes more transparent naturally

as it ages, so things that are there that are covered up

then sometimes become visible

and also partly because I think

the surface has been slightly worn away during the lining process.

It's like the ghost of something there, isn't it?

It is, and also there's some...

some much brighter red.

That, I don't know that that helps.

-Reddish-brown line coming down here.

-Yes, I can see that.

And this, this has a slightly warmer colour to it here.

So I definitely think something else is going on underneath this painting

that we're not really seeing now,

which would make it a brilliant candidate for having an X-ray,

because that should show whatever's

underneath the current picture.

While Sarah Cove takes a closer look at Yarmouth Jetty,

I wade through Constable's wealth of correspondence.

'There are several references to the Spedding family...'

Spe... Spe...

Spedding.

'But no mention of a visit to Great Yarmouth.'

Yet Constable was a skilled draughtsman

who preferred to work from nature,

and he grew up not far from this beach,

so owner Gilly and I have come in search of any surviving landmarks

that he might have incorporated into the picture.

So, looking at your painting

-as we stand here on the beach...

-Yes, on the beach.

Let's try and imagine where Constable might have stood

-when he was painting the scene.

-Yes.

-What do you think?

Because if you look, just behind where that lamppost is

is where the jetty was.

-So...

-He must have been a little bit this side.

-Yes.

-Mustn't he?

I mean, roughly about here.

The original Yarmouth Jetty has sadly been demolished,

but historic photos and pictures evoke its bustling heyday.

I've got an engraving here, mid-19th century engraving.

I mean, I think, looking at what's left there...

..this building could be

what's now called the Marine pub.

-Yes.

-See, with its distinctive high roof there.

-Yes.

-That shape could be that shape there

but if this is a rough sketch,

if it is, he's missed out the chimneys here

and he's missed out the other buildings, he's just getting an idea

-of what he wanted to put here.

-Yes.

You know, assuming this could be an oil sketch to then,

to work up into a painting.

The big difference between the sky in this painting and today

is there's a little patch of sailor's blue peeping through here.

-Today, not a chance of any sun whatsoever.

-No.

Grey, grey, grey!

Built in 1801,

the Marine pub once played host to Nelson's navy,

although it's not recorded whether they were moved to break into song.

Gilly and I have taken refuge from the cold

and it's a chance to update her

on our investigation into the labels on the back of her painting.

Gilly, I've been doing a bit of research into

some of the different things we've found on the back of your painting.

Now, first of all, this reference,

Constable writing to Leslie on December 30th, 1836,

and this is what it says on the back of your painting.

This is Constable saying, "We have a very small but pretty thigh of doe

"from my old friend Lady Dysart, and we are almost alone,

"only our friends Mr and Miss Spedding,

"very old and much esteemed friends of my poor wife."

Now, I wanted to see

if that corresponds to an actual letter by Constable

and I found this letter with the same date, December 30th, 1836,

-from Constable to Leslie.

-Oh, how exciting!

-And it is the same

but interestingly, it has an extra line in it.

Constable then goes on to write,

"Our object is to get a long and quiet hour for the children

"and Miss Spedding, who is fond of Maria."

Now, the Maria he's referring to here is his daughter, Maria.

-So it shows us that they were...

-They were friends.

Yes, old and esteemed friends

and also they wanted to spend time together, and Miss Spedding

had a particular relationship with the children as well.

That's very nice.

I thought, wrongly,

that she was quite a sort of middle-aged spinster lady.

Our research into Miss Spedding

has turned up one tantalising piece of evidence -

a letter that describes her as

the owner of a genuine Constable painting called Dedham Mill.

The letter says, "These things may perhaps be interesting to Miss Spedding,

"as they show what were the feelings with which he painted such pictures

"as the one she possesses, which represents,

"as you have probably mentioned to her, Dedham Mill on the River Stour"

and also, intriguingly, at the end,

it says, "I hope soon to hear from you

"that Miss Spedding has received the picture in safety."

So it sounds like she's only just had the picture

or was receiving the picture about this time,

and the letter was written in January 1841.

So we know she owned one.

Did she own two? I mean, does two make a collection?

Well, one, two or three, yes.

I've always wondered about her collection

and whether there was any reference

to any other Constables that the Spedding family owned.

The connection between the Constable family and the previous owners

of Yarmouth Jetty is an encouraging sign,

so Gilly and I are taking our scientific analysis a step further.

We've come to the Hamilton Kerr Institute,

a specialist art research facility in Cambridge, to meet Chris Titmuss.

'He's going to X-ray the ghostly shadow in the middle of the picture.'

-And this is Gilly.

-Hello, lovely to meet you.

It's a lovely painting.

It is looking lovely, isn't it?

Have you seen it out of the frame before?

I've never seen it out of the frame.

-I doubt it's ever been out of the frame since 1942.

-Amazing.

Now, there's a bit I'm particularly interested in, which is here.

-It's like, you know this mark here, Gilly.

-Yes, there's a sort of

-spooky mark there.

-Very interested to see.

Can't wait to see what's under there.

OK, we'll just make sure that the edge of the plate

-goes over the interesting bit.

-Wonderful.

-Great.

I'm sorry, there'll be a horrible loud noise for a few seconds.

SIREN WAILS

This is now when the X-rays are actually being exposed

and taking the X-ray of the painting.

-Are you excited?

-Very, yes, I think it's simply riveting.

It's all very dramatic with the noise and the flashing light

and everything, isn't it?

Hurry up! How much longer now?

Oh, look. 40, 45... I could do a countdown.

I got used to doing this for news, yes, absolutely.

Three, two, one,

cue!

Well, that's what I hear

-and that's your cue, Chris. Is it ready?

-Let's hope so.

-We'll go and see.

-Come on, then.

-Gilly, after you, go on.

-Let's go, let's go.

Once Chris has begun to feed the exposed plate into the scanner,

all we have to do is wait for the image to appear.

Here you can see the image starting to appear in a very small form.

-Oh, look, this is your bit.

-There's a big white blob there.

-Yes.

Do you think that's the thing?

-The thing is, we don't know what way up we're looking at it yet.

-No.

It looks like Father Christmas's beard.

Well, it does rather, yes, it does.

With a blob in the middle.

What can it be?

Nothing. Perhaps there's nothing underneath.

Turn this way, turn round this way and look at it,

look at it upside down.

-It's a face!

-Oh!

That Father Christmas's beard is a forehead.

-I don't believe it.

-Look!

-Oh, my goodness.

-My goodness.

Do you see that?

-Heavens.

-How amazing.

How amazing. Look, so there are the eyes,

there's the nose, there's the mouth

and if you look, there's a...

He's got a ruff on or something.

-Yes, or a stock, a kind of scarf.

-Stock.

How incredible.

Is it, is it a face?

Yes, undoubtedly it's a face! Look, and here are the shoulders.

I can see his mouth.

Isn't that incredible?

What is he doing under my painting?

THEY LAUGH

Oh, my goodness.

After Chris has taken the rest of the X-ray plates,

the mystery man hiding beneath Yarmouth Jetty is revealed.

So this is the whole of my painting now.

That is the whole of your painting.

-So actually...

-You can see these are the white waves of the sea...

-And here...

-And those are your buildings.

This is the white bit that comes,

when we said, "Look, that ghostly image there,"

that's the line of his shoulder.

-That's right.

-There.

-How amazing!

You've got a bit of Yarmouth Jetty with a man lying on his side in it.

-Yes.

-Can you...

-That's Yarmouth Jetty,

those are the buildings on the end.

-Can you turn it now so we can see it...

-We can swing it round

and there we have your man.

The thing that's so extraordinary is that is a real person,

staring out at us,

through...through time, like a ghost.

-Through Yarmouth Jetty.

-Through Yarmouth Jetty! Yes.

I mean, one note of caution amongst all our excitement

is that I've seen before, forgers use old canvases

and then do their own painting over the top

and because they were using an old canvas,

people would be deceived by that

and think, "It's an old canvas, so it must be an old painting,

"when in fact it wasn't, it was just a fake." So...

-Sorry, just a...

-No, no!

-Just a little note of caution, a little note of caution.

-Yes, absolutely.

But it's tremendously exciting!

While Fiona and Gilly come to terms with the remarkable results

of the Yarmouth Jetty X-ray, I've travelled to America

in search of answers about our other potential Constable picture,

A Sea Beach, Brighton.

I've come to the Detroit suburbs to meet the painting's owner,

a lawyer called Tom Toppin, and his wife, Bernie.

How did an American attorney come to fall in love

with this most English of artists?

I inherited pictures. I inherited pictures from an aunt,

and they were English. They had big name attributions.

Now, the interesting thing is, over the years,

I checked these and they all turned out to be fakes.

-LAUGHTER Oh, dear!

-So...

So you've learned the hard way?

I learned the hard way, exactly, but it didn't cost me anything.

Despite the steep learning curve, Tom and Bernie began collecting

British landscapes in earnest,

and when A Sea Beach, Brighton came on the market,

they thought they saw the hallmarks of a genuine Constable.

There's so much feeling and emotion in that picture, it really is.

You have the sky, you have the waves rolling up on the beach,

you have the two figures that are really just a couple,

couple of strokes by Constable, but yet they're engaging.

You have that one little red dot in the middle of this...

this brown-tone picture, it's, it's just... It's captivating.

We fell in love with the picture and we decided to go ahead

and, you know, take a leap of faith.

Although the painting once belonged to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,

it was not included in the definitive index

of Constable's works compiled by Graham Reynolds in 1984.

That omission left it merely attributed to Constable

and worth a fraction of its potential value.

-I can tell you really love it.

-Oh, yeah, we do, we do.

But how would you feel if someone says it's not by your beloved artist?

I'd be disappointed, but the picture's still a beautiful picture.

We love the picture and if that were to happen,

we would bring it back here and we would say,

-"Attributed to Constable".

-Ha-ha, very good, dear!

Well, we're going to do our damnedest to take away that word, "attributed".

Although Tom didn't find his own painting in the book,

he did find another strikingly similar picture,

just a half-hour's drive from his front door.

'It hangs in the Detroit Institute of Arts, a treasure trove

'of masterpieces assembled by the city's auto barons

'during its wealthy heyday.'

THIS Brighton Beach is a genuine Constable

and it's been here since 1953,

but does it help or hinder our cause?

I mean, this is extraordinary, really.

-You'll have to promise me that you never knew about this.

-Never knew about it.

-Because it's pretty well your picture but a simplified version of it.

-That's correct. It is, isn't it?

I mean, I've got here your image.

I suppose, at a glance,

there are a few differences which are worth pointing out.

I mean, yours is a bit more complicated,

it's slightly fuller of information, isn't it?

It is. The activities going on in the middle ground

among the figures. In my picture, there's an anchor in the front.

And that anchor is curiously important, isn't it?

Because it sort of anchors the eye, doesn't it?

I think it does, it draws your eye right there

and then your eye moves up to the rigging

and the activities around the sails and the boats.

'The problem is that the Catalogue Raisonne claims that this is

'the only genuine sketch Constable ever did of the scene

'and that any others must be fakes.'

'But I have a hunch that this little sketch might actually help

'prove that Tom's picture is authentic and we're taking it

'to Alfred Ackerman in the Conservation Department

'for a closer look.'

Ah-ha.

Now, the first thing one can see is that it's actually

paper laid on to canvas, unlike yours, which is canvas.

-That's correct.

-Yes.

And the other thing is, unlike yours, Tom,

which is quite brushy, this is a different technique.

Alfred, how do you think it was done?

We believe it was done with a palette knife, something

not too dissimilar from this, where the artist would

have laid it on broad strokes of paint with this sort of implement.

The palette knife became

one of Constable's favourite sketching tools during

his time in Brighton. He moved to the seaside resort in 1824,

seeking respite for his dying wife. The town inspired just one

large work, The Chain Pier, but his countless sketches

and drawings suggest he planned more paintings on a larger scale.

And I'm starting to wonder whether Tom's picture

could be a larger, more ambitious version of this one.

Why don't we just measure it and find out what the size is

-in relation to yours.

-Fine, yes.

-All right.

Do this in inches first, so we've got roughly 12¾ height...

..and 19 and seven eighths in width.

Now, how does that equate to the size of yours?

-It's about half, isn't it?

-It's...approximately, yeah.

The curious symmetry in size suggests that whoever painted

Tom's picture did so first by copying and enlarging

the Detroit sketch, a process called "squaring up" that involves

drawing a grid on a blank canvas and copying the picture in sections.

So, here we have a picture that looks like yours, which we know to

be by Constable. It doesn't have all the elements of your picture but

looks like yours, which is exactly half the size and is on paper.

I mean, could it be that this might be some...first stage,

some preparation, some movement towards an idea

that is further developed in yours?

I think that this is, in my mind at least, a continuation,

going into my picture of his thought process,

and it's a logical progression.

After an encouraging visit to Detroit, I'm keen to find out

more about the history of Tom's painting,

so I've travelled east to Boston to visit the Museum of Fine Arts.

A Sea Beach, Brighton was sold from this prestigious collection

in 1992, but when they originally acquired it in 1946,

they believed it to be a genuine Constable with a chequered past.

When Tom's picture first emerged publicly,

it was in extremely august company, here.

Now, fortunately, I've got the catalogue that describes the picture

in the exhibition, and it says something extremely interesting.

"When first discovered, sky, sea and foreground were completely

"covered with a forger's conception of a Constable."

In other words, someone had already touched it up with sinister intent.

The museum actually holds a file on Tom's picture.

Now, they won't let us film it on the premises, but they've allowed me

to photocopy the contents, take them away and study them.

I'm desperate to know more about this murky period

in the painting's past, and the file contains a dramatic piece

of evidence - a condition report, describing what it looked like

when New York art dealer John Mitchell acquired it in 1945.

Ah, this is interesting.

This is the condition report, just after they'd bought it.

"When just discovered by Mitchell," the dealer, "the sea, beach and sky,"

it says here, "were covered with a forger's work."

"Blue-green heavy sea, blue-green stormy sky,

"impastoed rocks," presumably thick paint put on top of the rocks.

"Removed by Mitchell, but unfortunately no photograph taken."

Back in Britain, I get a message from Philip about the contents

of the Boston file.

'Hi, Fiona, it's Philip speaking from Boston.

'Er, we've had a look at the file on Tom Toppin's picture.'

Prior to being bought by the Museum of Fine Arts,

was covered with over-paint.

It had been turned into what looked like a more finished Constable,

what they described as "a forger's conception."

'It seems, therefore, that there's rather more to this picture

'and its past than meets the eye.'

How strange. If you were going to forge a painting,

why would you paint over a genuine Constable?

Why would a forger go the trouble of adding new layers of paint

to a perfectly good Constable sketch?

I've come to the Tate Gallery's warehouse stores

in southeast London in search of answers.

'And I've enlisted the help of Anne Lyles,

'one of the world's leading Constable experts.'

When it comes to attribution of Constables, how tricky is it?

Very tricky. I would reckon Constable probably

is the most single complicated artist in British art.

These vast shelves hold many secrets, including paintings

that were once proudly displayed as genuine works by John Constable,

but later discredited.

They include works now known to be by his son, Lionel...

..fakes by unknown forgers

and even a sketch that continues to divide opinion.

I'm asked to look at things the whole time that are clearly

imitations, fakes or forgeries.

As I say, sometimes the dividing line between what's

an imitation passing into a fake or forgery

can be quite difficult to define, but there's one person out there

who we know almost certainly was an outright faker and forger,

and he's called James Orrock.

Born in Edinburgh in 1829,

James Orrock practised as a dentist before pursuing his passion for art.

He became an accomplished painter in his own right but as an art dealer,

he was suspected of "touching up" sketches to increase their value.

There is a suspicion with Orrock that with his painterly skills,

he may well have over-painted pictures that he owned and bought

for resale, perhaps passing them off as other things knowingly,

or perhaps persuading himself they were all right

but he might just titillate them a little bit.

And so he was taking paintings that existed already, by whoever

had painted them, over-painting them to make them look like Constable.

I think he was always prepared to push the boundaries

in the direction of fake or forgery in a way that other people weren't.

So, when looking at Constables, we need to have Orrock in mind,

-somewhere in the back of our minds?

-We... Absolutely, very important.

Back at the gallery, Bendor and I meet to take stock.

Seeing those dubious Constables at the Tate

has worried me a bit, you know. Particularly now that Philip

has confirmed that someone has tampered with Sea Beach, Brighton.

I don't think it's as bad as you think, actually,

because the key word here is "tampered with".

We know it's not an out-and-out fake from beginning to end.

So what we've possibly got is something that started life

as an original Constable and then someone painted over to make it

look like a more finished picture. A little bit like this, in fact.

-So, what, added in new, fresh layers of paint...

-Yeah.

..to fill in, what, the sky or the sea, the rocks, that kind of thing?

To make it a more valuable picture

and a more aesthetically pleasing one.

But I've got an idea as to who might have done that,

because a picture was sold in 1895 at Christie's.

Picture here sold, Brighton Beach, and you probably recognise

-the name of the vendor.

-Mm, James Orrock.

Indeed, our favourite Constable faker, James Orrock.

Now, I can't prove that Tom's picture

is the one that James Orrock sold in 1895, but the thing is,

we know that someone has tampered with this picture,

and what we need to do now is prove that the original

layers of paint are in fact by Constable and no-one else.

Of course, that's not the only painting with a hidden past.

Gilly's Yarmouth Jetty's got a few secrets, hasn't it?

-Yeah, now this mystery portrait.

-Mm.

-Isn't this completely fascinating?

-Incredible.

It's almost impossible to make an artistic judgement about the X-ray

of a painting beneath a painting.

But we do know that Constable did do portraits early on in his career.

Like most artists, he had to do them to earn his bread and butter.

I particularly like this example of Mary Freer on the right here,

which is dated to 1809.

What we'd like to know is something about the date of the portrait

-that we're dealing with.

-Well, just put the X-ray back for a second.

I've done some research about what our mystery gentleman

is wearing there, and from what I can see,

it's all about the neck cloth or the cravat,

because that is where fashion was at for men,

sort of late 18th, early 19th century and there were manuals

devoted to the different ways men could tie their neck cloth,

and judging by the height and knot of that neck cloth,

-that is about right for Constable's time.

-Mm.

It would suggest that he's a gentleman,

so he could be a patron who's commissioned a portrait

or he could be a Constable family member.

So I guess the next question is, if this portrait IS by Constable,

-then why would he paint over it?

-Mm.

Back in America, I've travelled to Philadelphia

to follow up one last lead.

We'll need to convince Constable experts

that A Sea Beach, Brighton fits into a known pattern of work.

And I think I've found a compelling example

here in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I've joined up with Tom and Bernie and curator Jenny Thompson

to examine two authentic Constable sketches

that date from his time in Brighton.

So the Chain Pier sketches are just in this gallery.

Oh, that's striking isn't it?

I mean what do you think's going on here, Jenny?

Well, Constable's, I think, working towards his exhibition picture.

He chooses...probably the first step is a quarter-size sketch

really playing around here, I think, with the number,

the buildings and the pier, on the beach

and then he'll work on the half-size sketch

and this picture is looking a little bit

more at the figures, I think, on the foreground.

The way Constable is working here is uncannily familiar.

A small first draft using palette knife on paper,

just like the Sea Beach sketch in Detroit.

A larger oil sketch on canvas...

..just like Tom's picture.

Not only does the technique look the same,

the dimensions are an exact match too.

Tom, what's your view of this?

I think the similarity is striking.

We have the Detroit picture of Brighton Beach,

we have my picture of Brighton Beach

we have these two pictures in this museum,

which are analogous to those two pictures,

so it would mean that my picture would fit in

with this step procedure that John Constable did

in working up to a major picture.

Our visit to Philadelphia might have brought us one step closer

to the proof that Tom and Bernie have spent 20 years searching for.

But with scientific analysis still to come from Sarah Cove,

I want to know how confident they're really feeling.

In my heart I still feel it's a Constable.

I'd like to see what the scientific evidence has to say about it.

I said before to you and I'm going to say it again.

I'm 100% confident that the picture is by Constable,

it came from his... originated from his heart

and it was developed in his mind.

When Philip gets back from America,

we reconvene and head back to Sarah Cove's studio.

She's been examining the paintings in minute detail.

But has she found proof that A Sea Beach Brighton

WAS squared up from the small sketch in Detroit?

When I looked at this painting under the microscope,

I could see around the edges

in places like this in particular, little ink strokes,

which were marked at specific intervals -

there's another one -

and then measured exactly and then lines were drawn

vertically and horizontally to form a grid

for squaring up. And not only that -

then the composition was drawn in,

taken precisely from the Detroit sketch.

These very calligraphic kind of squiggles are very typical

of the type of under-drawing that Constable did

and there are some others, you can see there,

there's one in the sky.

Obviously a forger could have done that, but to a degree,

it's almost like a kind of handwriting.

So Constable may be giving himself away by his working practice.

Sarah's even found something that's almost as good as a signature -

evidence that the blank canvas was prepared

with an initial textured layer of paint favoured by Constable.

In this painting in particular,

he's prepared the canvas with a pink stippled priming which you can see

most noticeably in the landscape areas. As far as I know,

this pink stippled priming was not,

has not been used by any other contemporary painters.

So you've looked at hundreds of works by Constable,

you've examined them, you know him better than most.

-In your view is this by Constable?

-Yes.

I would have no hesitation in saying that this is definitely a Constable.

Bingo.

Well we're certainly getting there.

Sarah's technical opinion of A Sea Beach, Brighton

is thrillingly frank,

but what does she make of Yarmouth Jetty?

What do you think of our mystery gentleman?

Well, I did say to you, have an X-ray done,

didn't I? From looking at the surface under the microscope,

as far as I can tell, not only is there what appears to be

a portrait of a man in a cravat and probably a black coat,

but I think, on top of that, there's a portrait of a woman,

in a large white bonnet, which you can see here.

You can see the edges of the frills,

which are the edges of frilly brush strokes really.

That would have been the lace trim round the edge of the bonnet.

Oh, I thought it was just wacky hair.

But that's another portrait on top of it?

No, men at that date didn't really have wild hair-dos.

So what you're saying is, this canvas has not just been used once,

not even twice - three times?

It's been used at least three times.

By taking tiny samples of paint from different sections

of the picture, Sarah can identify colourful details

in each portrait.

The frills of a white bonnet,

the yellow flash of a brooch,

the edge of a red cloak,

brown hair and a smart black jacket.

Is it possible to tell who they might be?

It's not very easy because the image that you're actually seeing

at the moment is two faces

superimposed, one on top of the other.

So although these eyes appear to be very clear,

we don't know whether they're the man's eyes or the woman's eyes,

so we can't really tell who it is.

If it was just one face, it would be much easier

to read than it is now.

And is there anything about that that makes you think it's

more likely or less likely to be by Constable?

I think the fact that the canvas has been reused a number of times

is a thing that we know that Constable did.

We know that he often had complete disregard

for the preparation of the canvas,

so the fact that one's painted directly over another

with no intervening layer, you know, shows that he didn't

care about it, really, whether it lasted, whether it all wrinkled up.

So, in your researches,

have you come across anything that would be not typical of a Constable?

It's almost certain that areas of the clouds

and particularly this very bright blue,

of which there are two to three layers,

some of that has probably been applied by a later hand,

to cover up the wrinkling and the cracking in the surface.

What, like you see here? This kind of thing.

Yeah, you can see, and that is coming through from the portraits.

So both Tom and Gilly's picture share the same fate.

Someone, at some point, has tried to make them

look more like a Constable.

-True.

-But 64,000 question - do you think this IS a Constable?

I think this one's much more difficult to make

an absolutely definite judgment about

because there are so many different things going on on this canvas.

But I think there are sufficient things

that look like Constable,

that if I had to come down on one side of the line or the other,

I would say I do think it is a Constable.

Well, I don't think that could have gone any better, really.

I mean, Sarah, from a technical point of view, is convinced that

both our paintings are by Constable.

She's examined something like 200 works by John Constable,

so she knows what she's talking about.

Sadly her opinion alone isn't enough to take us to the end

of the road with those paintings, but it gets us a long way down it.

Sarah's bullish opinion has now prompted Tom Toppin

to take a leap of faith and finally have that layer of varnish

removed from A Sea Beach, Brighton.

It's one last gamble

in their bid to prove that the painting

is authentic, because we need to prove our case

to the art world and also the art market.

We've asked Constable expert Annie Lyles, and David Moore-Gwyn,

Deputy Chairman of Sotheby's,

with a background in multi-million pound Constable sales,

to scrutinise the pictures and our evidence.

Now that it's been cleaned it's removed that yellow,

sort of almost yellow film all over it.

With Tom and Bernie over from America,

and Gilly on her way,

Annie is about to reveal whether the paintings are genuine.

First up, Yarmouth Jetty.

So, Gilly, this is the moment.

How are you feeling about it all?

Fairly excited and pretty apprehensive.

But it's been a great journey.

I've been pondering this picture.

I've been thinking about it long and hard.

And slightly mixed views, I think.

Still some positive things to say but it's not all plain sailing!

There is some Constable in this picture

but it's been heavily over-painted by another hand,

particularly in the sky, probably also in the sea,

so what we see is a mix of maybe some Constable and another hand.

What do you think of that?

Well, it's interesting to think

there's any Constable in there, isn't it?

Well, I think we're a bit further on, aren't we?

Yes, we are, we're a lot further on than where we were.

Yeah, that's good.

To be able to say that it is Constable and not anybody else,

is it a question of now trying to remove some paint?

Well, I have to say, this is very difficult,

to know what to do at the next stage, and I think it depends

on you, your patience, your interest in the picture and so on.

At this stage, and in this state, it's really hanging in the balance.

Yarmouth Jetty still has more secrets to give up.

But now it's Tom and Bernie's turn.

Was A Sea Beach, Brighton painted by John Constable?

There has been uncertainty about this picture for some years.

However, with Constable, always technical examination is crucial

and with this, what's happened is that the conservation analysis

has simply, in my view, removed any doubts.

Everything fits.

The tonality - that relates to a working sketch in progress.

There are no problems about it in my view.

I like it even more now since it's been cleaned, I have to say.

Any auction house would be happy to give it the full attribution.

John Constable, plain and simple.

With the dates, of course.

-Yes!

-THEY CHUCKLE

Is that a tear in your eye there? Look at you!

That is going to be such a blessing to so many people.

I mean, it is, it's going... This is going to bless a lot of people.

Thank you so much.

And, crucially, from a financial point of view,

you're dealing with, with a half-a-million-pound picture,

-I mean, I could see this...

-Wow!

I could see this now at auction at 400,000 to £600,000.

On a good day, with the wind behind it, as they say,

you could almost be talking about a million-dollar picture.

-Oh, that's wonderful.

-So, not bad from your initial investment.

-No.

-No, not at all.

-It turned out well.

But the big thing is, not only the money,

but the gratification of looking at that picture,

knowing it's a Constable and appreciating it as such.

Our tale of two Constables began with letters and emails

sent from around the world

and ends with a painting restored to its rightful place

as a work by one of England's finest artists.

And there's more good news for Gilly Dance,

because further restoration work has now convinced Annie Lyles

that Yarmouth Jetty was also likely

to have been painted by John Constable.