Gainsborough Fake or Fortune?

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?!

-Yeah!

'..or bitter disappointment.'

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

'Our latest investigation takes us into uncharted waters.

'We're scouring the nation's museums and archives for unrecognised

'works by one of Britain's finest artists - Thomas Gainsborough.'

Get it right and we can return to the nation a small trophy

by the great artist Gainsborough.

'With not one but two paintings to investigate,

'we make links back over 200 years.'

I can definitely see a family resemblance with the eyebrows.

Diana, what do you think?

I think...yes!

'We travel to America,

'where Gainsborough's most famous works hold clues.

'But there are pitfalls ahead as forensic tests

'raise unexpected doubts.'

If this is early 19th century, it's dead in the water.

Every art detective lives for the first glimpse of a lost masterpiece.

Waiting for that moment can take a lifetime.

But Philip Mould and our head of research, Dr Bendor Grosvenor,

believe they know exactly where to find unrecognised work

by great artists -

an extraordinary new website called Your Paintings.

OK, so what are the chances there are lost masterpieces,

-or sleepers, in there?

-Well, there are over 200,000 paintings

on this site to be able to choose from.

17,000 of these have no artistic attribution at all,

they're just "unknown artist" and there's thousands more copies

of things, which are called "follower of".

Any of which could be the real thing.

'This ground-breaking website, a unique collaboration between the BBC

'and the Public Catalogue Foundation, records every oil painting

'in public galleries across the UK -

'the nation's entire collection.

'They are our paintings.'

'Our challenge is to find a lost national treasure,

'a painting languishing unloved that we can prove

'is in fact by one of our greatest artists.

'But where to start?'

I think in this, like, melee of possibilities,

I'd like to suggest we refine our focus

and go for one artist in particular - Thomas Gainsborough.

So one of Britain's greatest artists?

For as long as I've been interested in art, I've loved Gainsborough

and we have had some success in the past, Bendor and I, with Gainsborough.

Look at this.

Cornard Wood - Gainsborough's long-established masterpiece.

Now, this is a Gainsborough I discovered - of a scene nearby.

And you think there really could be lost Gainsboroughs amongst that lot?

Well, we've drawn up a short list of six possible pictures

spread across the country.

But a screen can only tell us so much,

we've got to see these things in the flesh.

In which case, we're going to have to get out on the road.

Gainsborough was famous for both portraits and landscapes

and we've found potential candidates for each online.

They're spread right across the country.

'I'm starting with contenders in Leicester...'

It's a very decent-looking picture.

'..and Liverpool.'

That probably is a Gainsborough.

The problem is it's a major restoration job.

'I'm joining Philip to assess a possible contender

'at the Courtauld Institute, in London.'

I think we'd be failing in our duty

if we didn't take this one further.

'Meanwhile, Bendor is in St Albans.

'Like most of the paintings displayed on the website,

'this portrait is hidden in the stores.'

It's a really nice picture. I think it's got a chance, actually.

'Another contender lies deep in the basement

'of Wolverhampton Art Gallery.'

It looks like a pastiche, a follower of Gainsborough.

'And finally, we check out one in the stores of the Tate Gallery.'

So this looks like a Gainsborough to you?

A potential treasure could be lurking.

Now, we've scoured the country,

let's think about which are our strongest contenders.

And given that Gainsborough painted both portraits and landscapes,

can we take one of each?

I think that's a great idea and, for my money,

it's that landscape at the Courtauld Institute.

-I think it looks really interesting.

-Now, that, at the moment,

is thought to be by a follower of Gainsborough's,

it's someone who admired him and copied him,

but you think it's actually by Gainsborough himself?

-I think it's got a real chance.

-All right, what about a portrait then?

Well, I reckon this portrait of Joseph Gape in St Albans

is quite a good one to look into.

It's currently got no connection to Gainsborough whatsoever.

It just says "unknown artist", but I think it's got a good chance.

I reckon that, as we say in the trade, this picture is right.

So if we can transform that then from a painting by an unknown hand

to by one of Britain's greatest masters, that's a real coup.

Well, let's go for that then.

OK, so our two paintings are Imaginary Landscape,

by a follower of Gainsborough at the Courtauld.

And the portrait of Joseph Gape,

by an unknown artist at the St Albans Museum.

And we are saying that by the end of this process,

we will be able to say, for at least one of the paintings, that it

-is by Thomas Gainsborough.

-Good plan - a face and a place.

But it's not going to be easy, because, unfortunately,

all his personal accounts were destroyed after his death,

so this is a case of actually looking at the physical evidence,

looking at the brushstrokes, working out whether it's by Gainsborough

on those grounds rather than anything else.

And there's another challenge -

there's a man in the art world who we have to convince.

He is perceived as the authority on the works of Gainsborough.

His name is Hugh Belsey.

He sees one, two, possibly three pictures a week,

but of the hundreds he sees, he only accepts one or two.

Hugh Belsey is a hard nut to crack.

The best way to understand what we are trying to find

in our sleepers is to see Gainsborough at his best.

And where better to do that than the National Gallery.

It's home to many wonderful Gainsboroughs.

Including my favourite painting anywhere in the world.

The sublime Artist's Daughters Chasing A Butterfly.

There has never been a more perfect portrayal of childhood.

Gainsborough was born in 1727, in Sudbury, in Suffolk,

the son of a well-to-do cloth merchant.

Even as a child, he displayed a prodigious talent

and was soon painting portraits.

He rose to prominence when he moved to Bath, in 1759,

the destination of choice for society

keen to take the waters

and use the opportunity to have their portrait painted.

Although it was portraits that initially brought him fame,

his true love was English landscapes,

an art form in its infancy in the mid 18th century.

It's an early work, Mr And Mrs Andrews,

that we've come here to study,

to look for clues that could help us understand our two paintings.

This was new, wasn't it? Because, prior to this,

portraits were the things that people wanted, weren't they?

Yeah, this is a new type of portraiture,

done with both people and landscape.

'He had a supreme skill in capturing character

'and this is one of the qualities we should look for in our portrait.'

They're quite an unlikeable couple, aren't they?

They're not a couple that you warm to.

Yes, but they're posing, they're being painted for posterity.

But there's just a little whiff of...I don't know, what is it?

Humour? Sarcasm?

'Gainsborough was renowned for his skill in painting fabrics.

'He took great interest in the clothes that his sitters wore.

'Now, this should help us with our portrait of Joseph Gape.'

She's dressed as if she's going to a party. And look at those slippers.

Imagine what the mud would do to those.

Maybe that's why she looks so uncomfortable.

'This painting is a sign of Gainsborough becoming

'the artist of choice for the landed gentry and aristocracy.

'Does our sitter fit the bill?'

As a piece of social commentary, it's so fascinating, isn't it?

Because when he married her, she brought into the marriage

a lot of land and made him considerably wealthier.

And so, it's as if he's saying,

"Here's my wife. Slope-shouldered and flat-chested,

"slightly sad-looking but, nonetheless,

"here's my wife and here's my land."

'And although young, Gainsborough was already showing a deep

'connection to the English landscape,

'pushing the boundaries of what was possible.'

What we begin to get here is an artist who has got

a naturalist's feel for landscape.

He's really observed it, but with a poet's eye as well.

There's an untidiness,

with little observations of things like this,

falling over stoops,

there's trees in the background that sort of bend and twist.

'Did the fresh-faced artist who painted this,

'grow into the man capable of painting something

'as bold as our candidate, Imaginary Landscape?

'There are clues here.

'Each of our two contenders is going to require its own investigation.'

Our journey starts back at the Courtauld Institute,

the home of Imaginary Landscape.

For years, it was thought to be by Gainsborough,

but then, 20 years ago, it was stripped of its attribution

and since then, has been languishing as a late follower of Gainsborough.

In other words, by someone who copied him maybe as much as a century later.

'I'm joining Karen Serres, Curator of Paintings at the Courtauld

'to start the investigation.

'The first step is to remove the backing to show the stretcher.

'Immediately, we reveal a label saying "Humphry" -

'a clue perhaps to a previous owner?

'But I'm most excited about seeing the picture itself

'liberated from its clunky frame and without its protective glass.'

Mm...

I mean, it's fluent. It almost feels impressionistic, doesn't it?

Almost like it's one of your Renoirs downstairs in the gallery.

-Absolutely.

-It's an intuitive type of painting.

Something that almost seems to come

-from his imagination, don't you think?

-Absolutely.

If this is Gainsborough, there's...

-And I know you're not saying it is.

-Yes, exactly.

It would definitely be from the end of his career,

in the 1770s and the 1780s, where he let his palette

and his brushstroke kind of roam freer than he had previously.

'It's such a bold, experimental painting,

'and now that I'm getting up close to look at it, I'm surer than ever

'that it reads like a Gainsborough.

'The audacious brushstrokes,

'the intuitive understanding of nature,

'the style of the vegetation, they all bear his hallmarks.

'But this is also my first chance to study one of the painting's

'more unusual features.

'Imaginary Landscape is not like most oil paintings -

'it's been painted on paper which has then been stuck onto the canvas

'rather that painted directly onto the canvas.

'We know that this unusual technique was used by Gainsborough,

'so could this be useful evidence?

'With all these things going for it, I'm beginning to wonder

'why experts decided that this was not by Gainsborough.

'Indeed, Hugh Belsey saw it ten years ago, but didn't reinstate it.'

I think there was the feeling that it was a little bit different,

but in the technique and style,

maybe a little bit too loose and also,

he was such a popular artist, many artists painted in his manner.

And so, it was thought to be by one of those very, very late followers.

So even as late as the 1920s.

'That would place this picture over 100 years after Gainsborough's death,

'which doesn't seem right to me.'

I mean, in my bones, I feel this is by Gainsborough,

but it's Gainsborough at his most experimental, and my only hope

is that Hugh Belsey, who saw the painting, didn't see it as we did.

Out of its frame, it's very different.

We've really got to make the case for this. Get it right

and we can return to the nation a small trophy

by the great artist Gainsborough.

Back at the gallery,

Bendor is hot on the paperwork trail of Imaginary Landscape.

Rather helpfully,

our Imaginary Landscape already comes

with a certain amount of paperwork.

The first thing is a letter from the Courtauld Institute,

dated 1989, to the Government Art Collection,

that's the body that looks after

all the paintings in government buildings.

And it says, "I've given thought to the Prime Minister's request..."

Now, at the time, Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister.

"..and I'm willing to expend the loan for a further five

"years from January 1990."

So this is Mrs Thatcher saying, "I like this painting and I'd like to

"have it for a little bit longer in Downing Street."

Very nice to have.

And we can go back a bit further cos I've also got a bill of sale here

from Spink & Sons, famous art dealers, dated 1946.

And they were selling the picture to Viscount Lee Of Fareham,

who was a founder of the Courtauld collection.

And they call it "Landscape by Thomas Gainsborough,

"oils on paper, mounted on canvas..."

and it has a little bit of provenance.

"From the collection of the late A P Humphry..."

That's the name that Philip saw on the back of the painting.

"..whose direct ancestor, William Humphry,

"was five times Mayor of Sudbury..."

That's where Gainsborough was born.

"..and a patron of Gainsborough."

So we've got two rather august pieces of paper

saying this is by Gainsborough

and a possible link back to Gainsborough's place of birth.

Very encouraging.

With work on the landscape under way,

I'm following the trail of evidence

to discover who painted our other contender - the portrait.

Joseph Gape was once Mayor of St Albans.

The painting is currently listed as "artist unknown".

I've come to the county archives in Hertford, which house a wealth

of information about life going back hundreds of years here.

St Albans is just a few miles down the road

and I'm hopeful there will be more about former mayor, Joseph Gape.

Just because he was a mayor does not necessarily make him

important enough to have a leading artist paint his portrait.

First, a newspaper from just over 100 years ago

mentions the Gape family.

"Death of Mayor Gape. Scion of an ancient family."

So this is an article all about the Gape family.

"By the demise of Mayor Gape is removed the senior representative

"of the oldest family in the county,

"whose record goes back to about 1400."

Oh! "Another early reference of the name of Gape is included

"in the list of those who had to provide "Corselets"..." -

that's a kind of armour -

"..in 1587 and 1588,

"at the time when the "Invincible Armada" attacked England."

Goodness me!

'The archive also holds a detailed biography of our man.'

"Joseph Gape..." Here we are. "..is said to have been born..."

I love that, "he's said to have been born" - no-one's exactly sure.

"..23rd May 1720 in the parish of St Bride's, London.

"He's admitted to Gray's Inn, being then of the Middle Temple...",

so he was a lawyer,

"..and was Mayor of St Albans...", here we go,

"..in 1746, 1761 and 1797.

"He died 9th April 1801, aged 82 years." He lived to the age of 82.

Now, this is encouraging.

If he was mayor three times and a leading lawyer, Joseph was clearly

a man of distinction and came from a significant local family.

But as I look further, there's a surprising and worrying letter

relating to our portrait from more recent times.

"15th May 1968," this is from David Gape.

"Dear Mr Brett...", it says,

"..I am writing to you officially, as Mayor,

"to confirm the verbal arrangements which we have made

"concerning the portrait of Joseph Gape.

"The portrait is on loan, with its frame,

"to the city of St Albans for an indefinite period,

"subject to termination by either side at one month's notice."

So, hang on a minute, this painting has been loaned to St Albans

and to the Public Catalogue Foundation -

they don't actually own it.

'At some point in the past, this letter has been separated

'from the portrait of Joseph Gape in St Albans Museum.

'That means the curator, Catherine Newley, is not aware of its contents

'and the painting could be recalled by the family at any time

'if it's not on public display.

'At the moment, it's in a store cupboard.

'I've got to go to St Albans to pick up the painting and take it back

'for our investigation,

'so I can give her the news at the same time.'

Unfortunately, documentation has got lost along the way

and separated from the object.

Cos obviously, if that was something that we were aware of,

-we might have acted differently.

-Sure.

'The implications are pretty serious.'

If the Gape family wanted to, they could take the portrait back,

even sell it, and the museum would lose a painting

and it would disappear from public view.

-Does it change the way you feel about it?

-No.

No, I still think it's a really lovely painting

and I think it's something that the public should get to see,

whether that's through the Your Paintings website

or if it's on display in some way.

We're going to need to contact the Gape family to clear all this up.

But in the meantime, I want to know what Philip will make of it

after casting an experienced eye over it.

I bring you Mayor Joseph Gape.

How exciting!

What do you think?

I mean, it's just

that sort of staggering difference

between something you see on a screen, something

your imagination attaches to and then it's there, in front of you.

I suppose the first response is, it still looks like a Gainsborough.

Good. Well, that's a good start.

But it looks like a Gainsborough that's...that's suffered.

There's a problem with this picture - its condition.

Someone, at some point, has had a go at the face.

They've overcleaned it, they've taken off a top layer of paint.

And this makes it slightly strange-looking

and it's given it a slightly sort of ghoulish appearance.

It takes it away from what could or should be a Gainsborough appearance.

And then, there's the shape.

And oval is not that common in the late 18th century.

We don't normally associate those with Gainsborough.

But there are things that do look like Gainsborough.

I mean, the clothes, there's a grace,

there's a fluency that we saw in Mr And Mrs Andrews,

which I find quite convincing.

I mean, is this picture by Gainsborough?

I think it probably is.

Can we prove it?

Well, that's another matter altogether.

'We've established that the Gapes were an important local family,

'but there's no paper trail linking the portrait

'of Joseph Gape to Gainsborough.

'That could be a serious problem

'if we're to get our painting fully authenticated.

'But in this instance, we have access to the person

'who will ultimately judge our paintings.

'Hugh Belsey.

'He has the ultimate responsibility

'for compiling the definitive catalogue

'of all Gainsborough's portraits,

'known as the Catalogue Raisonne.

'So I want to meet him.

'Can he guide us as to what might convince him to accept

'our works as true Gainsboroughs,

'especially the portrait.'

When it comes to authenticating Gainsborough,

what kind of clues might we look for, other than the brushstrokes?

Well, I suppose you're looking for a bit of jigsaw.

There are obviously things like the costume,

that often gives you a good lead to dating.

You look at the likelihood of a sitter

being where the artist might be, which is an important point.

You look at how it relates to other pictures,

what might have happened to it since it was painted.

But with Gainsborough, there's very little documentary evidence.

And why is that?

Because I suspect, as soon as he died,

his widow just put everything in a large skip outside his house.

Why would she do that?

Because she felt he was an artisan rather than an artist, I suspect.

She was rather a grand woman who had rather more airs and graces

than was useful to Gainsborough's reputation.

But he was appreciated in his lifetime, wasn't he?

So I'd have assumed the records would be kept.

There is no known letter to Gainsborough that exists.

-Not a single one?

-Not a single one.

There are certain letters from him and they are a delight.

Some of them were so vulgar

that they were actually destroyed in the 19th century, sadly.

-And what a shame.

-Yes, isn't that sad?

So it's not going to be an easy one then, when it comes to trying

to trace the, certainly the paperwork of a Gainsborough?

No, it's not at all.

Are you looking forward to our quest, to seeing the paintings?

Yeah, of course, yes. It's always exciting to see new pictures.

It's what keeps me going.

The way Philip built up Hugh Belsey,

I was expecting this very intimidating character

and, in fact, he's rather gentle and rather genial.

So that was a pleasant surprise.

I suspect that'll all change once we stick those paintings under his nose

and the day of reckoning comes.

And judging from what he had to say,

I'm not sure it's going to be that easy to persuade him.

But we'll see.

Well, at least now we know what it will take

if we're to convince Hugh Belsey.

I'm hoping Joseph Gape's descendants can provide some clues

to back up our investigation.

The Gape family was once one of the richest

and most important in St Albans.

St Michael's Manor was built as the family home in 1586.

It's now a hotel, but I'm meeting two of Joseph's descendants there -

Judy Pearson, the owner of the portrait of Joseph Gape,

and her aunt, Diana Bennett.

She remembers St Michael's Manor

when it still belonged to the family.

Now, Diana, do you remember this portrait hanging in this house?

No, I was a child, so I probably wouldn't have noticed, I'm afraid.

I can definitely see a family resemblance with the eyebrows.

Diana, what do you think?

Well, I think yes!

The arch of the brows there.

Mine are now moth-eaten...

I tend not to talk about my eyebrows,

they get talked about enough as it is.

We've established that the painting is on long-term loan,

but I want to know how and why that loan came about in 1968.

And whether there's ever been any suggestion that the painting

might be by Gainsborough.

The Mayor of St Albans, Mr Brett at the time, wrote to my father and

said that they were putting together

a whole lot of history for St Albans and that

Joseph Gape had been mayor three times, which is very unusual,

over a period of 50 years,

and they wondered if they could have a portrait to hang of him.

And the feeling is that this was painted,

as far as we know, we don't know who painted it, by somebody

when he was mayor for the second time.

So he sent that to St Albans for them to have on a long-term loan,

but we never have thought it was a Gainsborough,

so it's going to be really interesting to see.

Diana has some more helpful family information for me.

Not only was Joseph Gape

a senior lawyer at the Middle Temple in London,

but his brother married into the family that owned

nearby Gorhambury House, a home with its own collection of great works.

They had and have a fantastic collection.

Therefore, Joseph Gape would have become accustomed

to seeing beautiful portraits by the great painters,

so he had all sorts of reasons for knowing who was good,

when it came to portrait painters.

This is progress.

We've learnt the subject of our portrait was not just

a man of means, but also of culture.

It seems increasingly likely that his place in society was such

that his portrait would have been painted by an artist of note.

But we're still a long way

from proving that artist was Gainsborough.

If it does turn out to be by Gainsborough, what will you do?

Perhaps get it hung again somewhere. That'd be good.

I really don't know.

I mean, we're not there to grab it back and just make money out of it

and just sell it cos it's by Gainsborough.

I think it should be restored properly and then,

we would have to think what we did with it, wouldn't we?

Whilst Fiona continues her enquiries about the portrait, Bendor is

looking for more information on our other Gainsborough contender -

the painting called Imaginary Landscape.

Worryingly, it was downgraded from a Gainsborough some years ago

and is currently considered to be a late copy.

But my hunch is that this is wrong.

Bendor has come to the Witt Library.

Here they hold reference material relating to two million paintings.

Most major artists are catalogued here,

there are photographs of the pictures,

receipts with dates of sale, evidence of ownership...

It's a sweet shop for researchers.

So I found our picture, our Courtauld picture here in the files.

There's three photos of it.

One when it was in the Courtauld Institute, called Gainsborough.

Another one when it was in the Lee Collection.

He's the guy who donated to Courtauld, also called Gainsborough.

And another one when it was sold at Christie's in 1946

as a Gainsborough, which is quite reassuring in one way,

cos it means once upon a time,

it's been taken seriously as a Gainsborough.

And I've got a drawing as well, which is quite interesting

cos it shows us a comparable arrangement of the figures,

very close to the little group

of figures we've got in our picture.

These figures are so similar to me,

they have to come from the same artist's brain.

Evidence is definitely mounting up.

But will we be able to prove that Imaginary Landscape is indeed

by Gainsborough and not a late copy?

Our next move takes us to a location just a short walk

from Gainsborough's birthplace, in Sudbury.

We've come to the setting for Gainsborough's most famous

early landscape - Cornard Wood, for a bit of an experiment.

Cornard Wood is a work of enduring beauty and immense significance.

Gainsborough was barely into his twenties when he painted it,

yet it helped to establish English landscape as an art form in itself,

inspiring artists like Constable.

250 years later,

this is still clearly the place Gainsborough painted.

But Gainsborough never let reality intrude too much

in his search for the perfect composition.

Many believe he moved the church to create a focus for his painting.

As he grew older, so his taste for risk and experimentation grew.

And the way that he painted later landscapes took him

even further in that direction.

Now, have a look at this.

So early on, Gainsborough absolutely cracks nature.

He knows how to portray it as far as he needs.

And as he gets older, his imagination begins to take over,

but it was not completely his imagination.

He needed props to make it all work for him. Such as boulders like this.

-Moss like that.

-Little bits of fir tree.

So this is a model,

he would make models to create a landscape that he could then paint?

And he would work out the most picturesque,

the most beautiful, the most dramatic way of making nature work better.

So he'd get something like, for example, this piece of broccoli.

All you need to do with a piece of broccoli is

just rip away a few of the leaves, a few of the parts.

-The floret, I think is the technical term.

-The floret...

-Yes.

And look, already, from a distance, that's beginning to look like a tree,

-agreed?

-Yes.

-No, look more convincing.

-Yeah, well, it could do.

-It could do with a bit of work, yeah.

-OK.

He would then use the rock behind,

so the rock becomes basically a sort of mountainous outcrop.

A tree against it like that and then... Why are you eating it?

I like it.

Coal is a brilliant form of cliff.

So big boulders?

-Big boulders like that.

-How fascinating.

He would add to this little models of horses,

little models of sheep.

I mean, it was a proper game of soldiers he was playing.

When you look at the tree in the middle of the Imaginary Landscape,

it does look like a twig, really large,

rather than a tree, doesn't it?

Cos it's only got these branches at the very, very top,

which is not what you'd expect in a tree.

Indeed, and when you know his secret tricks,

it's almost like too much information.

I mean, you can see the props.

But it wasn't just a question of choosing the right object.

It was also a question of working out the light.

And get the right light and his brush can do the rest.

'And to do that, he would paint by candlelight,

'creating atmosphere that could be poetically intense.

'You can see the effect of this technique

'in the Imaginary Landscape,

'particularly in the way the light falls upon the rocks.

'It's uncanny to think that Gainsborough

'may have created our picture in just this way.'

We're all meeting back at the gallery for an update

on our two paintings and to look at some new evidence we've uncovered.

So where have we got to? I mean, we're making some progress, aren't we?

With Imaginary Landscape, it was certainly interesting

to see how that model worked in Cornard Wood.

And then, those figures in the Gainsborough drawings

in the Witt Library and the similarity with the figures

in Imaginary Landscape was also really encouraging.

And when it comes to the portrait of Joseph Gape,

during the course of my research,

I came across another portrait of Joseph Gape, a later portrait,

when he was mayor for the third time in St Albans and this one

painted by Thomas Lawrence. He's one of Britain's greatest artists.

I mean, his paintings are up in Windsor Castle. I've seen them.

I love the fact that when you put them together,

you can't mistake those eyebrows, can you? Definitely the same chap.

Yeah. But see, that's really good, cos it shows that Gape

was a discerning man when it came to art and getting his portrait painted.

Now, in our search for clues about the Gape picture,

we've commissioned a full range of technical analysis.

X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet photos here

and these are going to be really helpful for one crucial thing,

because the big problem about our Gape picture is that it is an oval.

Gainsborough didn't paint ovals.

However, what he did paint was an oval within a larger,

squarer picture, if that makes sense.

So he would paint an oval and then paint around the edges in black.

Now, if I show you an ultraviolet photograph of our Gape painting,

have a little look in the bottom left-hand corner.

Can you see that sort of dark smudgy area?

Which is overpaint.

-Look at that.

-Someone later on has extended Mr Gape's arm.

Now, why has he done that?

If I show you the X-ray,

you can see, at the bottom of the arm,

that there's actually a definitive sort of end line there.

Yes, you can see where the arm finishes

just before the edge of the painting.

Now, the reason someone has extended Mr Gape's arm is

because, originally, this picture was in fact a squarer canvas

with the oval painted in the middle and then the corners painted out darker.

And then someone came along and wanted to cut it into an oval.

He got the scissors out, snip, snip, snip.

And they left it looking like a bit of a stump,

so they had to paint on an extra bit of arm to make it look normal,

and that's what we've got.

So originally, our painting would have looked like a perfectly

-standard Gainsborough portrait, like this.

-That explains it!

That explains why it is an oval when it shouldn't be.

For Gainsborough, it should not be that shape.

Someone's had a go at it.

Brilliant. That is brilliant.

And what we need to do now is take some of that technical fairy dust

and sprinkle it over your Imaginary Landscape

and what I suggest we do is start

with the paper that it was painted on and take a look at that.

I've got to go to California quite shortly on business

and I'm going to use the opportunity to look at a couple of American-owned

Gainsboroughs, which I think could be quite a useful comparison.

To create the painting Imaginary Landscape, we know the artist

used paper, which he stuck to the canvas.

So I've asked paper expert Peter Bower to look at our picture

and see if the paper itself can help establish the date of the painting.

First, a lesson in how old paper was made.

So what should we be looking for in a piece like this, for example?

Well, in his lifetime, most paper was laid paper,

which is formed on a mould made of wires.

If we look at this image of forming a sheet of paper.

This is the vatman.

And he's holding a paper mould, which has these metal wires on it.

He dips that into a vat of pulp

and gives it a shake and the water starts to drain out

and as you transfer it off,

this impression remains in the sheet.

The crucial thing is that, over the years, the width of

the wires varied, making it possible to use these grids to date the paper

and help prove this was painted during Gainsborough's lifetime.

Now, can we see any of these?

These chain lines and laid lines?

Well, one of the problems with oil on paper is the paint layers obscure

the profile of the sheet.

But, luckily, the artist has done us a favour

and he's worked on the wire side of the sheet,

which is more prominent.

Here, there are tiny indications of the laid ones.

Below the paint, but the paint is making them visible.

And what about dating the paper to the right kind of time.

1770s, 1780s.

The paint lines are about 27, 28 millimetres apart,

which is an 18th-century profile. It's...

-Late 18th century?

-Mid to late.

-The wire profile that's visible is right.

-That's promising.

My business trip to Los Angeles allows me to take

the opportunity to do more work on the Courtauld's Imaginary Landscape.

It may seem a surprising place to investigate a British artist,

but over a third of all Gainsboroughs are now in America,

many bought by new money in the early 20th century.

This is the Huntington Gallery, in Pasadena,

established in 1928 by real estate

and railroad magnate Henry Huntington.

He was at the forefront of the American drive to collect British art

of the 18th and 19th centuries.

This is now home to some of Britain's greatest works,

the most famous of which

is Gainsborough's Blue Boy.

I've spent my life admiring Gainsborough.

As a result of my studies,

I've been able to find many lost works by the painter.

The Cottage Door is one of Gainsborough's

most famous later paintings.

Two very similar works were long thought to be copies by another hand.

But in the past year, I've succeeded in proving now

that they are all by Gainsborough,

shedding new light on his working processes -

three paintings on the same theme.

One of those that I had to convince was the man who will judge

our two contenders - Hugh Belsey.

By happy coincidence,

he is the curator of this exhibition in Pasadena

that is showing these three paintings together for the very first time.

-Hugh, hello.

-Hello.

-This looks absolutely wonderful!

-Thank you.

I'm very pleased with it, it looks lovely.

So seeing these three pictures together like three brothers,

what do you think it tells us about Gainsborough?

What's interesting, really, is that he sorted out this design

in the picture that's in the Huntington now, and then

he was clearly very satisfied with that composition

and decided that he'd play around with it another two times

and there's the other two pictures here.

And both of them had different emphasis.

This one, I think the figures

and the tree on the right

are particularly strong,

whereas in this one, the tree

on the left is particularly good.

Did he work the same way with Imaginary Landscape?

The figures that Bendor saw on the sketch at the Witt Library

suggest he might have been working on another recurring theme.

This is the perfect opportunity to let Hugh know which landscape

we're looking at and, of course, to see whether he's willing

to reconsider his previous verdict.

So here's the picture. Do you recognise it?

Yes. Yes, I do.

-It's from the Courtauld Institute.

-And do you recall...?

I remember seeing it

and I remember thinking it was well worth looking at a little deeper.

-Right.

-It's a very Gainsborough-esque theme, without any doubt at all.

-And it's on paper, as far as I remember.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

I'm very happy to look at that more, that would be very interesting.

Well, thank you.

These three takes on the same theme,

but with subtle differences,

demonstrate the experimentation of Gainsborough,

and seeing them together helps me believe more than ever

in our very experimental painting - Imaginary Landscape.

I can remember so well the excitement and relief,

I mean, genuine relief getting those pictures proved

and I remember now, having seen them again,

what it was that was the characteristic of Gainsborough

that so convinced me and it was the feeling

of one colour beneath another,

glaze, the warm ground,

on which the paint is painted shinning through,

acting a bit like a sauce someone had poured over a pudding or whatever,

but done with absolute expert skill

and modulation in the case of Gainsborough.

We've established that, later on his career,

Gainsborough was happy to create versions of his successful paintings,

but he always used a similar technique.

First, he would lay down an undercoat of warm colour.

To this, he would add layers of half strokes and transparent strokes,

allowing the undercoat, known as the ground, to show through.

If we can find this tell-tale warm ground in Imaginary Landscape,

it would help argue for its authenticity.

And the best way to look for it is a microscope.

I've returned to the Courtauld, where head of conservation

Aviva Burnstock has agreed to study the painting.

She's using a high-powered microscope that can magnify

the image up to 400 times

and give us close-up images of the brushstrokes and paint layers.

But will we see the warm ground layer that I'm hoping for?

It's been painted very quickly and directly with a very few strokes

of white mixed with pink and yellow for the head and the flesh paint.

This is the figure kneeling by the water.

And you can also see the ground coming through, which is

-a nice, light tan colour.

-Wow!

That's exactly what I was hoping we'd find on this.

Surely, this is Gainsborough's characteristic technique of one

thin layer on top of another

to give that sort of warmth.

'Now, that's good, but it's just the beginning of the process.

'We need to test the chemical make-up of other pigments

'used in the painting.

'We're interested in the blue paint in the distant mountains.

'Blue is useful to test because, 20 years after Gainsborough's death,

'a new pigment was introduced, called cobalt blue,

'replacing the traditional pigment smalt.

'Any trace of cobalt blue in the original paint would be bad news,

'placing the picture after Gainsborough's death,

'suggesting this is a late copy after all.'

There's a lovely area which shows the blue pigment.

Does it look to you like a Gainsborough blue?

Well, my first instinct is it's cobalt blue,

which couldn't be by Gainsborough.

Forgive me for saying so, but I do hope your instincts are wrong.

If this is early 19th century, it's dead in the water.

However, this is just looking under the microscope and it's not

the ideal and definitive way of looking at blue pigments.

'I thought we were almost home and dry

'with the ground layer proving correct,

'but now we're going to have to wait

'for further tests to the blue paint

'which just may show that the painting was done

'after Gainsborough's death.'

While Philip hopes for a good result from the paint tests,

I've come to Bath, where Gainsborough lived and worked.

I'm visiting the Fashion Museum on the trail of our other painting -

the portrait of Joseph Gape.

We know Gainsborough was very particular

about the costumes his sitters wore.

I'm hoping curator Rosemary Harden may help us

confirm a date for our portrait from the clothes Joseph Gape is wearing.

The thing which I was drawn to immediately is the coat,

because, in the 18th century, men's coats dramatically changed style.

So at the beginning of the 18th century, there would be no colour

whatsoever, so in this portrait here by Ramsay from the 1740s,

absolutely no colour at all.

But around this time, things were changing

and it was all inspired by country wear.

So here's a portrait here of a man on his horseback.

But you can see he has a collar to this coat.

A turnover collar which is starting to look like

our man's coat here.

He didn't look like the height of fashion, I have to say.

He certainly isn't, I mean,

this is very definitely not fashionable dress.

The next picture Rosemary shows me is a familiar friend,

which can really help our quest.

In the very...another very famous Gainsborough portrait,

Mr And Mrs Andrews, which is dating from 1750.

I had a look at this in the National Gallery.

It's such a fabulous portrait

and you can see there's a turnover lapel there, this part of a coat.

And then, if you move on a little bit into the 1760s,

this is a portrait of a chap who's a young man,

he's going off on the Grand Tour of Italy

and he is wearing a coat with this white turnover collar,

which is very, very similar to the one that we've got here.

But we've also got this buttonhole here, edged with metal thread braid

and here is a portrait of Warren Hastings,

he was the Governor of India.

And this is from slightly later, in 1766,

and here we have that wonderful great, big buttonhole there,

edged metal thread braid.

-This is a real fashion statement, isn't it?

-It is indeed,

so that's starting to put the date, certainly from the clothes,

in the 1760s.

But how can you be that precise? Because, I mean,

I've had this jacket for more years than I care to remember

and people could hang on to their coat for ten, 20 years,

presumably, cos there was nothing wrong with it

and it was perfectly serviceable, as my mother would say.

So this could have been painted later, cos he was hanging on to his coat.

I think that's a very interesting point, but the crucial thing is you're having your portrait painted.

So you want to be in the up-to-the-minute clothes.

You want to present yourself in the up-to-the-minute...

-So he wouldn't be wearing his old jacket, would he?

-I think not.

-You're quite right.

I mean, certainly Gainsborough,

who was a firm believer in his sitters wearing the clothes of

the day, but also sometimes he did give his sitters clothes to wear.

This famous portrait of the Blue Boy,

and he provided the clothes for that.

So, yes, maybe, this coat belonged to Gainsborough

-and he lent it to Gape for the portrait.

-Possibly.

And what about the rest of his clothes,

the shirt and the cravat that he's wearing?

I think that it's absolutely right for that 1760s date.

'So that seems to confirm this portrait dates from the 1760s -

'the time Gainsborough was at the height of his fame

'painting portraits in Bath.'

It's looking increasingly plausible that Joseph Gape

could have turned to Gainsborough

to immortalise his second term as Mayor of St Albans.

But back in London, the painting Imaginary Landscape is in trouble.

Aviva has carried out pigment analysis

that has thrown up the possibility that the paint could come

from after Gainsborough's death.

We're now heading into the labs of King's College

for the decisive test.

Aviva is analysing a tiny sample of the blue paint

in an electron microscope.

It's like astronomy, isn't it?

And we're just moving into the surface of a planet.

This will tell us once and for all

whether this blue is smalt, which could have been used by Gainsborough,

or cobalt blue, only available after his death.

-You're looking a bit nervous.

-I am a bit nervous. I admit it.

Only cobalt blue contains aluminium.

And any trace of that and we're done for.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed we don't find any.

Now the peaks are coming up for different elements.

That's aluminium?

Yeah, it's aluminium and cobalt together,

so it looks like it is cobalt blue.

Isn't that incredibly sad?

It rules out Gainsborough.

I'm incredibly surprised, but I suppose also a bit humbled.

Gainsborough is a huge inspiration to me.

He's a figure to whom I feel really connected and it's possible

that perhaps I don't know that man of inspiration

as much as I thought I did.

Time to head back to the gallery

and prepare our findings for the verdict.

Time is running out

and we've got to show these paintings to Hugh Belsey very soon.

So how are we doing?

Obviously, not quite so great on Imaginary Landscape.

I just can't understand it. I mean, to me, it just breathes Gainsborough.

I mean, the whole design of the landscape, you know,

the way he sort of constructed these things, partly from his imagination.

The way the figures are done. The way it sort of glows.

I mean, that's all the stuff that I identify

with this artist to whom I'm deeply attached

and yet, the damn science says

that it was painted after Gainsborough died.

Well, sometimes, you might just be wrong!

Well, I know Philip is my employer, so you might think I'm being biased,

but I've never known him to be wrong on Gainsborough ever.

-Could this be the first time?

-Good man!

Thank you for that.

Well, let's park that for a minute and let's talk

about the portrait of Joseph Gape, see if we can agree on that.

And I spent some hours in Bath at the Fashion Museum there

looking at his wig, his hat and the coat that he's wearing and dating

that portrait to Gainsborough's time through his clothing.

Well, you can give me your fashion view, then, on this picture,

which is a very close portrait to our Gape.

It is, of course, Sir John Durbin, who was the Mayor of Bristol,

and it's a fully-accepted Gainsborough

and is currently hanging in a museum, in America.

Look at that, they're almost identical, aren't they?

And, of course, this is why it's so interesting,

because portrait painters hit upon a design,

a sort of formula that could work, which they would often repeat

and we've got another one, a secure Gainsborough

to compare it with now that looks pretty well identical.

It does and, then, the shape is very interesting, isn't it?

The oval shape.

Yes, the John Durbin picture was in a described oval,

as our Gape would have been.

And I think I might have another bit of a clincher,

I'm quite pleased with this one.

Cos our man Gape was a member of the Society Of Arts in London

from the late 1750s onwards.

The Society Of Arts was a bit like the Royal Academy today.

It was the main exhibition space for artists.

Now, Thomas Gainsborough, when he was a young lad,

was exhibiting in the Society Of Arts from 1761 onwards,

so we've got a little bit of a scene of the crime going on

where they could both have met.

They could have shaken hands.

Well, that's all good, so we can present the portrait

of Joseph Gape, then, to Hugh Belsey with a degree of confidence.

Shame about your dodgy landscape, Philip.

But then, on the other hand, you are convinced, aren't you, still that it's by Gainsborough.

So, now, we need to see what Hugh Belsey has to say.

We've brought both paintings to Gainsborough's house in Sudbury,

where his birthplace is now a museum.

We're presenting our evidence to Hugh Belsey, who will be

the ultimate judge of our work.

The artist of the portrait of Joseph Gape is currently unknown.

To attach the name Gainsborough to it and upgrade the listing

on the Your Paintings website would be a real coup.

The painting is on loan at the St Albans Museum,

where the curator, Catherine Newley, is looking after it.

-So this is the moment we're going to find out...

-Yes, yes.

..if indeed this is by Gainsborough or not.

-Excited? A bit nervous?

-Yes, yeah, really excited.

I think it'll be a really big thing.

Imaginary Landscape belongs to the Courtauld Institute.

Gainsborough was the first artist ever purchased for the collection.

Karen Serres is the curator of paintings there.

And she's been following our work on the painting every step of the way.

It was purchased as a Gainsborough, but in the past 20 years,

it was considered a very, very late follower.

So it had been effectively de-attributed to...

So it had been turned, basically, from an 18th-century picture into...

A very late 19th-century work.

It's time to find out what Hugh has decided.

So, Hugh, we're in Gainsborough's house.

We've got two potential Gainsboroughs.

Do you feel the ghost of Gainsborough looking over your shoulder

-in moments like this?

-I've been in this house a lot, so, yes,

he's been looking over my shoulder.

Well, OK, so now it's find-out time.

What are your views first on the landscape?

Um...

I mean, it's not quite the tonality that you would

expect of Gainsborough at this stage,

the handling of the paint just isn't subtle enough.

It's just a bit more laboured than Gainsborough managed.

I think it's a Gainsborough drawing that has been

overpainted by somebody else.

Aha! So you concede then that this was initially a work by Gainsborough?

Yes. If you look at this one, which is in the Met,

you can see that it's got exactly

the same sort of vocabulary, with the wispy tree,

the large mass on the left,

the smaller one on the right.

It's all the same sort of vocabulary.

So what Hugh believes is that Imaginary Landscape is a sketch

by Gainsborough to which colour and paint have been added.

Maybe that's something I should have considered,

but I'm fantastically relieved to hear that the name Gainsborough

has now been formally re-attached.

But if it's a Gainsborough drawing that's been painted over by somebody else,

do you say it's by Gainsborough then?

Well, as I've catalogued a great many Gainsboroughs

and also his drawings,

I suppose I should really include that in our drawings catalogue.

-Oh, that's progress! Hang on a minute.

-That's a gain, that's a real gain.

-Yes, yes.

So what do you think of that?

I think it's so interesting, because for earlier artists, you talk about

"after a design by" a certain artist

and it sounds like this is exactly what's happening in this case.

What's really important is first to be able to catalogue it

correctly and it hadn't been so far, so that's wonderful, thank you.

And hang it now, perhaps?

I think yes, it will be really interesting for our visitors, so...

Yes, I think we'll put it proudly on our walls.

-With the right label.

-With the right label, absolutely.

We have long labels and we can explain

in detail exactly how this work came about.

Right, the portrait then.

Um... The portrait is about 1762.

And it would have originally been a rectangular picture,

but with a faint oval inside the rectangle.

And I suspect this black mark at the bottom here

is the edge of the faint oval that was in the original.

So who do you think painted it?

Oh, Gainsborough.

-You're as certain as that?

-Oh, yes.

All of this is entirely Gainsborough.

No-one else could quite have done that.

-So what do you make of that?

-Oh, it's really exciting.

This was a painting that had an untitled artist,

so, yeah, to have someone attributed to it,

-and to have someone like Gainsborough is even better.

-Yeah.

I mean, this is a real promotion for old Joseph Gape here, isn't it?

Unknown artist to one of Britain's greatest artists.

-And I can see the colour coming back into his cheeks.

-Yes!

So now that he has been promoted this way,

presumably he's going to come out of the store cupboard.

We would love to have him back out on display.

We'd obviously have to speak to the family that still owns the painting.

-Yes, cos that's the one uncertain thing, isn't it?

-Yes.

It's been on indefinite loan to the city of St Albans

for quite a while, so I have to see what they say.

Well, it's back to the gallery for our final job - to let Judy Pearson,

Joseph Gape descendant, know the results of our findings.

Judy, last time we met,

-we were in the house where this portrait hung originally.

-Yes.

It's been quite a journey since then. We've done quite a lot of work with it.

As you know, the art world can be a very unpredictable business

and this was a very protracted process,

but I can tell you that your ancestor has been christened with an artist.

-It's Thomas Gainsborough.

-Wow!

What do you think?

That is very exciting indeed.

-At the moment, it's on loan...

-Yes.

-..to the St Albans Museum.

Are you happy, certainly, for the time being,

for it to continue to be on loan to the St Albans Museum?

Yes, I think we are.

Well, I'm sure they'll be very pleased to have it.

Well, I just...in case you think we're making this all up

and pulling your leg, I can actually prove to you this

is by Gainsborough by showing you something on the website over here.

This is the Your Paintings website and if I show you,

you can see Joseph Gape, there he is.

-It used to say "by an unknown artist".

-Absolutely.

-Now it says...

It says "by Thomas Gainsborough".

Thomas Gainsborough.

That is quite something, isn't it?

Well, thank you.

Thank you for all that huge amount of work, thank you for finding it.

I think that's, that's very... Cos we would never have known.

I'm so glad it paid off.

And if I click over to our Imaginary Landscape of the Courtauld,

you can see that that's been changed too.

"By Thomas Gainsborough, reworked

"by a late 19th-century English follower."

Well, that's two new christenings

and just imagine how many more there might be on there.

This could keep us busy for years.

And if you'd like to try your hand at being an art detective,

why not visit the Your Paintings website at...

You'll be amazed at what you can find.