:00:05. > :00:11.Two paintings that appear to be by one of Britain's most famous
:00:11. > :00:14.artists. If they are real they are worth a small fortune. If they are
:00:14. > :00:18.fake they are practically worthless and I'm on a mission to find out
:00:18. > :00:20.the truth. I want to know how Alfred Wallis, a humble Cornish
:00:21. > :00:24.fisherman, became one of the country's most celebrated painters
:00:24. > :00:26.but also one of the most faked. It's like Aladdin's cave for anyone
:00:26. > :00:29.interested in art, a place like this.
:00:29. > :00:39.In my quest, I'll be uncovering genuine works by Wallis in hidden
:00:39. > :00:40.
:00:40. > :00:42.collections. Wow, look at that. Getting scientific tests on our
:00:42. > :00:45.pictures... And before we go to auction, I'll
:00:45. > :00:48.ask the experts if they think they're worth up to �30,000 pounds
:00:48. > :00:58.each. First impressions? Too soon. Or whether the dealer who bought
:00:58. > :01:19.
:01:19. > :01:22.them has made a very expensive Ask anyone why St Ives has become a
:01:22. > :01:24.mecca for artists and they'll tell you it's the clarity of the light.
:01:24. > :01:26.you it's the clarity of the light. And being here on a slightly cloudy
:01:26. > :01:33.And being here on a slightly cloudy day you can almost feel that the
:01:33. > :01:36.light is being reflected back at you. Add in cobbled streets and
:01:36. > :01:39.unique people, and you can see why St Ives is still a thriving art
:01:39. > :01:42.community today. Artists have been coming here since
:01:42. > :01:46.the 1880s, when the railway finally linked this Cornish town with the
:01:46. > :01:50.rest of the country. And they made the small fishing harbour and its
:01:50. > :01:57.people the subject of thousands of paintings.
:01:57. > :02:05.But it wasn't a creative urge that Born in Devonport near Plymouth, as
:02:05. > :02:14.a young man Wallis went to sea as a Then, in 1887, aged 32, he and his
:02:14. > :02:17.wife came to St Ives to run a scrap Wallis was just the sort of
:02:17. > :02:21.character that artists wanted to paint in their scenes of Cornish
:02:21. > :02:29.life. Little did they know that he'd be beating them at their own
:02:29. > :02:39.By the early 1920's Wallis had retired and, after the death of his
:02:39. > :02:43.wife, he took up painting to fill He never claimed to be an artist.
:02:43. > :02:45.He just wanted to record his life at sea and his home town, using
:02:45. > :02:53.leftover pots of boat and house paint, scrounged from friends and
:02:53. > :02:57.Wallis may not have started to paint until he was 70, but he was
:02:57. > :03:00.prolific. And he painted most of his works here in this cottage at
:03:00. > :03:03.the table. His work was rather unorthodox as well, so he'd be
:03:03. > :03:07.painting on cardboard boxes, old pieces of wood. In fact anything he
:03:07. > :03:11.could lay his hands on, even the table itself some say he would
:03:11. > :03:18.paint up to six pictures a day and as a tourist you could turn up at
:03:18. > :03:22.this door and for a few shillings take away a momento of your holiday.
:03:22. > :03:27.-- a memento. Today, the art world celebrates the pictures that remain
:03:27. > :03:30.in big collections but there must in big collections but there must
:03:30. > :03:34.others out there we've never seen. The problem is Wallis rarely dated
:03:34. > :03:37.his paintings, and didn't always sign them, so every time a new one
:03:37. > :03:44.surfaces, it presents the art world with a puzzle if you can't trace it
:03:44. > :03:46.directly back to the artist, how do Now a dealer has discovered two
:03:46. > :03:56.more possible Wallis's, but with no provenance proof that they're by
:03:56. > :03:59.I get asked to authenticate art I get asked to authenticate art
:03:59. > :04:02.because I'm totally independent and I have been known in the past to
:04:02. > :04:08.spot fakes and forgeries just at a glance, but these two paintings
:04:08. > :04:11.could be quite difficult. They've already sold for about �1,000, so
:04:11. > :04:15.somebody thinks they're worth something, but if they're genuine
:04:15. > :04:19.Wallis's though they could be worth 20 or 30 times that.
:04:19. > :04:26.I want to take these paintings to auction, but the first thing I need
:04:26. > :04:29.Well, here they are. What we're looking at here is sensitivity of
:04:29. > :04:33.perception and that's really just trying to get an immediate feeling
:04:33. > :04:36.of what these pictures are to you. I mean, of course I expected them
:04:36. > :04:44.to look like Wallis's and by saying that I think they're certainly the
:04:44. > :04:47.right palette. We see a signature in the corner here the style and
:04:47. > :04:56.the subject matter is exactly what we expect to see, and one thing
:04:56. > :04:59.that I straight away look at here is the sea. Even artists who
:04:59. > :05:02.thought he was a very childlike painter at the time said his
:05:02. > :05:06.perception of painting the sea was fantastic, so that's got to be an
:05:06. > :05:09.immediate thought. What is the sea like? The boats in the harbour of a
:05:09. > :05:15.Wallis were always very, very finely painted. Is it the case
:05:15. > :05:18.here? See the little holes? Wallis was notorious for nailing his
:05:18. > :05:26.pictures to the wall after he painted them in his cottage, so yes,
:05:26. > :05:29.they look like Wallis's, but let's Well this one has definitely been
:05:29. > :05:39.painted on some sort of cardboard advertising box, but that's easy to
:05:39. > :05:40.
:05:40. > :05:44.fake. This one's quite a plain back. Straight away, oddly, this kind of
:05:45. > :05:51.feels quite contrived. So let's try to make an immediate judgement. Are
:05:51. > :05:54.they real, are they fake, which one I have concerns about this one
:05:54. > :05:58.because it seems to tick too many boxes and for some reason I kind of
:05:58. > :06:01.feel that it's trying very hard this one I feel, even though the
:06:01. > :06:11.sea isn't as strong as this, that this one potentially could be the
:06:11. > :06:15.
:06:15. > :06:18.real thing. What I need to do now, though, is to get these paintings
:06:18. > :06:23.next to provenanced, genuine Wallis's and start picking out some
:06:23. > :06:26.Established St Ives artists of the time called Wallis's paintings
:06:26. > :06:29."childish" and never took him seriously. But a group of young
:06:29. > :06:31.modern artists began to find his work inspiring.
:06:32. > :06:35.When Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood discovered Wallis in August,
:06:35. > :06:38.1928, they were stunned. Here was an entirely self taught man,
:06:38. > :06:45.breaking all the rules of their formal art school training - and
:06:45. > :06:48.They encouraged him to send bundles of his pictures to London, where he
:06:48. > :06:54.sold them for a few shillings each to some of the first collectors of
:06:55. > :07:02.Some of his early paintings, dating from about 1935, are hidden away
:07:02. > :07:11.here in a vault at The Dorset They're rarely seen, but at least
:07:11. > :07:14.I think they're very steeped in personal resonance and it seems to
:07:14. > :07:18.me that in these pictures he's calling together all sorts of local
:07:18. > :07:25.knowledge, but also his memories. I think this one has some resonance
:07:25. > :07:28.of his Newfoundland travels. You have this sort of very cold sea.
:07:28. > :07:31.It's actually almost as if he's identifying himself with the ship,
:07:31. > :07:36.as if he's on a journey travelling through the choppy waters. I find
:07:36. > :07:39.that a very personal observation. This is a landscape, we're not
:07:40. > :07:42.quite sure where it is, perhaps St Ives or Hayle, but in a sense it
:07:42. > :07:51.doesn't really matter he's stamping out, making a mark about the
:07:51. > :07:54.In this one he's using the support, it shines through. He's not
:07:54. > :07:57.bothering to cover the whole surface in paint so it's quite
:07:57. > :08:05.interesting to see. As he's working, you kind of begin to see how his
:08:05. > :08:09.mind is putting the ship down on Wallis's paintings look simple and
:08:09. > :08:12.that's one of the reasons forgers think they're easy to copy. But the
:08:12. > :08:16.more you study them, the more you appreciate that these are the works
:08:16. > :08:24.of a man who spent years at sea there's an energy and detail here
:08:24. > :08:27.To compare my two pictures to one we know is genuine, I've tracked
:08:27. > :08:37.down another Wallis painting, tucked away in another vault, this
:08:37. > :08:42.
:08:42. > :08:47.Good, it's under loack and key, It's like an Aladdin's Cave for
:08:47. > :08:50.anyone interested in art, a place like this. We know that this Wallis
:08:50. > :08:53.is genuine because Barbara Hepworth donated it. Barbara Hepworth was a
:08:53. > :09:03.famous St Ives sculptor who was introduced to Wallis by her husband,
:09:03. > :09:05.
:09:05. > :09:10.Ben Nicholson, so it's got a cast There's something striking
:09:10. > :09:13.immediately for me. The paintwork is laid on the sail, because my
:09:13. > :09:17.first impressions of one of our paintings was, I was just being
:09:17. > :09:21.over cautious I guess but I wasn't happy with the way it was painted
:09:21. > :09:31.but all of a sudden I look at this sail and I can almost see the same
:09:31. > :09:37.
:09:37. > :09:41.hand, so I need really to get mine I'm going to put the harbour scene
:09:41. > :09:46.to one side for now, because that's the one I liked the most, and I'm
:09:46. > :09:50.going to get out the one that I was genuinely concerned about. Now,
:09:50. > :09:53.it's not the front of the painting that I pick up this kind of hand,
:09:53. > :10:00.it's at the back. And if you look very, very closely where this has
:10:00. > :10:03.been painted out, it almost feels like eactly the same as this sail.
:10:03. > :10:09.I think what I'm trying to get from this is the feeling of the form
:10:09. > :10:15.with which he's creating his art work. The one thing I keep coming
:10:15. > :10:18.back to his water. The sea in our two pictures, naive, painted
:10:18. > :10:25.slightly differently to each other but almost painted in a very
:10:25. > :10:28.similar way to the sea in the genuine Wallis. The more I look at
:10:28. > :10:32.the three, I'm starting to get a really good feeling about the two
:10:32. > :10:35.we actually do have and the more you look it's easy to say these
:10:35. > :10:45.could be by the same hand and in this case I'm hoping that same hand
:10:45. > :10:49.
:10:49. > :10:52.I'm starting to believe that these could make serious money at auction
:10:52. > :10:56.for our dealer, but before I get too carried away, it's time for
:10:56. > :10:59.Fisherman-turned-artist Robert Jones has written extensively about
:10:59. > :11:02.how and what Wallis painted. I'm expecting him to spot things only
:11:02. > :11:06.another experienced mariner, like Wallis, would know details a forger
:11:06. > :11:16.would not think to include. Hello there, nice to meet you.
:11:16. > :11:17.
:11:17. > :11:20.I've got these paintings to show What's your first impressions?
:11:20. > :11:23.not dismissing this painting, but I don't feel it's right somehow.
:11:24. > :11:27.There are features in this painting which have the life and energy that
:11:27. > :11:29.you'd expect to see in a Wallis, and that is maybe in the stern of
:11:29. > :11:34.that ship, but I think it's mainly that ship, but I think it's mainly
:11:34. > :11:41.to do with the separate incidents in the painting. They don't fit
:11:42. > :11:45.together as I would have expected a Wallis to do. OK. There is also the
:11:45. > :11:55.fact that in most of his paintings of sailing ships there is what is
:11:55. > :11:57.
:11:57. > :12:00.known as rattlings. We don't have those. Wallis would have had to
:12:00. > :12:04.climb those in order to get to the masts to make sail adjustments,
:12:04. > :12:07.they are missing. Oh, look, look, I didn't see those. They were there,
:12:07. > :12:10.this person had started to put these things in and then stopped,
:12:10. > :12:20.as though he hadn't quite made up his mind. OK, let's move on to this
:12:20. > :12:21.
:12:21. > :12:31.First impressions? Really the same. And we have a feature here which I
:12:31. > :12:41.
:12:41. > :12:44.think is very odd. If this is St Ives Bay, Smeaton's Pier, the
:12:44. > :12:46.lighthouse, the look out. Here's the other pier on the other side.
:12:46. > :12:49.There's obviously the other lighthouse. That's right, Godrevy
:12:49. > :12:52.lighthouse, with the wall around and the stones and we've got all of
:12:52. > :12:54.that. But then, what's that? I think that that is a foreign
:12:54. > :12:56.lighthouse. I know he painted from memory,
:12:56. > :12:59.would he have created this mythical world?
:12:59. > :13:02.No, I don't think he would. I don't think he would have included that
:13:02. > :13:06.feature which is so specific along with a St Ives scene.
:13:06. > :13:10.So are we any nearer to the truth? Or are we still lost at sea with
:13:10. > :13:13.these pictures? I mean, what is your final conclusion on them?
:13:13. > :13:17.Well, whether I think they're genuine or not, my verdict would be
:13:17. > :13:19.that they're not, but it's only an opinion and I'm quite willing to be
:13:19. > :13:25.proved wrong. Have you got any bets on it?
:13:25. > :13:30.If I have they are going to be very small ones I can tell you.
:13:31. > :13:34.Joking aside, to be honest I'm gutted. I was really hoping at
:13:34. > :13:40.least one of these pictures was the real thing. And while you should
:13:40. > :13:43.never rely on just one opinion, Robert is a recognised expert.
:13:43. > :13:46.But after a good night's sleep and a full Cornish, I'm feeling a bit
:13:46. > :13:49.more positive. I've been thinking overnight about
:13:49. > :13:54.what Robert was saying and I wonder if we've approached this in a
:13:54. > :13:56.slightly cynical fashion. Wallis must have painted thousands of
:13:56. > :14:01.pictures and only a small percentage have been documented, so
:14:01. > :14:05.maybe these are real genuine Wallis's. I just want to give these
:14:05. > :14:12.pictures a chance to be real, so my next opinion is going to be a bit
:14:12. > :14:16.My next step is to give our paintings to an art restorer and
:14:16. > :14:19.conservator. Her analysis should get us a bit closer to finding out
:14:19. > :14:29.if they really are by the hand of Alfred Wallis. Fingers crossed
:14:29. > :14:31.
:14:31. > :14:39.Jennifer Ridd doesn't have the same There they are. First impressions?
:14:40. > :14:44.Too soon. Oh, OK. Far too soon. How will you be
:14:44. > :14:48.looking at it and what tests will you be doing to help me out?
:14:48. > :14:51.I'm going to analyse the support, and analyse the paint, I'm going to
:14:51. > :14:54.analyse the way the paint's been put on, I'm going to analyse the
:14:54. > :14:56.pencil and other media that he's used and by looking at Wallis's
:14:56. > :14:59.with very good provenance and his brush stroke, his particular
:14:59. > :15:02.signature, his way of applying his paint, his way of working his
:15:02. > :15:06.paintings.Wwe'll be able to see if they're the same handwriting. So,
:15:06. > :15:09.at the end of all this, will we just be able to say it's conducive
:15:09. > :15:19.with the period or will be able to find out whether these are genuine
:15:19. > :15:27.
:15:27. > :15:31.Time will tell. I'm not going to commit myself but
:15:31. > :15:34.I can see absolutely no reason why one can't say they are genuinely
:15:34. > :15:38.Wallis. Wow. That's where I'd like to get
:15:38. > :15:48.to. Just the truth really. That's all I want out of this.
:15:48. > :15:49.
:15:50. > :15:53.That's all one wants, that's all While Jennifer's doing her bit of
:15:53. > :15:55.the investigation, I've got more exploring to do in St Ives. I've
:15:55. > :16:01.heard that the tides are exceptionally low today, giving me
:16:01. > :16:05.a rare chance to see another piece I've taken a bit of a detour onto
:16:05. > :16:08.Porthmore Beach, because the locals have told me that I can get a
:16:08. > :16:12.really good view of the wreck of the Alba, which broke up here in
:16:12. > :16:16.1938. Wallis normally painted from memory but this is one of those
:16:16. > :16:21.rare occasions when he came down to the beach and went back to his
:16:21. > :16:24.cottage and did some paintings of Washed on to the rocks, hundred of
:16:24. > :16:27.locals helped survivors from the sea, but mid-rescue the St Ives
:16:27. > :16:37.Lifeboat overturned and five members of The Alba's crew were
:16:37. > :16:37.
:16:37. > :16:40.The tragedy had a big impact on Wallis, and all these years late,
:16:40. > :16:45.seeing what's left of the wreck somehow brings his pictures to life
:16:45. > :16:52.for me. It's great to stand here and look at something Wallis
:16:52. > :16:58.actually saw. It's a tangible link to his paintings, and I think on
:16:59. > :17:03.this journey I kind of think I Browsing galleries today, it's hard
:17:03. > :17:10.to imagine just how unusual Wallis' naive work would have looked. Back
:17:10. > :17:19.in the 1930s, the fashion was for Some of the better examples are
:17:19. > :17:22.hidden away in The Guildhall, where The town clerk's popped out for
:17:22. > :17:28.lunch, so that gives me a chance to look at the quite amazing
:17:28. > :17:32.collection in the office here. Now, the first thing I see when I walk
:17:32. > :17:35.in is two Park's on the wall. The early one, which is certainly
:17:35. > :17:38.contemporary with Wallis, is the type of scene that we'd expect him
:17:38. > :17:48.to paint - boats in a harbour on the sea, with that lovely dark sky
:17:48. > :17:50.
:17:50. > :17:53.behind. One thing's for certain, it's such a very, very different
:17:53. > :17:56.painting, and such a very very different execution of the painting
:17:56. > :17:59.as well. And this one that's slightly later than Wallis is
:17:59. > :18:06.exactly the type of painting you'd expect to see from the period as
:18:06. > :18:10.well. This is painted from the land, wheareas Wallis would have painted
:18:10. > :18:12.often from the sea, so not even a completely different style but a
:18:12. > :18:16.completely different perspective as well. But when you stand here you
:18:16. > :18:19.get a feeling that Wallis just ploughed his own furrow you know he
:18:19. > :18:23.must have seen these pictures going up. There's a mark of strength to
:18:23. > :18:26.say, yes, I can see you're painting like that, but I'm staying with the
:18:26. > :18:29.way I'm doing it. That made Wallis unique.
:18:29. > :18:32.But whether our two pictures are by the same hand or whether our dealer
:18:32. > :18:35.has made a costly mistake will depend on Jennifer's findings and
:18:35. > :18:38.our final round of tests. I've arranged to meet Jennifer in
:18:38. > :18:41.London at the laboratories of Art Access and Research. We're going to
:18:41. > :18:45.be joined by Nick Easthaugh who's scieftific tests made here later
:18:45. > :18:48.will tell us exactly when the pictures were painted.
:18:48. > :18:53.Well, it's been ten days since I left them with you, I'm intrigued
:18:53. > :19:01.to know what you think. Remember, Robert Jones said he
:19:01. > :19:04.thought they were not by Wallis. Will Jennifer disagree?
:19:04. > :19:12.Now, taking it in order I find the support correct in age. Paint
:19:13. > :19:16.layers - I find his signature in the way the paint's been put down.
:19:16. > :19:20.I find it in the way he's used his pencil outlining things, I find it
:19:20. > :19:24.in the composition and I find it in the whole feel. I think this is
:19:24. > :19:29.nicotine staining, he was a smoker. Would you analyse?
:19:29. > :19:36.We can have a go. It's difficult, I know.
:19:36. > :19:40.There are things we can do. Do you think the signature's right
:19:40. > :19:42.on this? The signature's the last thing I
:19:42. > :19:44.look at. I've seen so many fake signatures.
:19:44. > :19:49.But in this instance? I think it looks right.
:19:49. > :19:54.So, on the whole? On the whole, I have no doubt at
:19:54. > :19:58.all. OK, that's number one.
:19:58. > :20:01.Now, this one's called Red Sails, St Ives Harbour. Again, totally the
:20:01. > :20:08.signature of the way he's used his work, the way he's pencil worked it,
:20:08. > :20:12.everything. He really loved working that one. So I have no doubts about
:20:12. > :20:16.that. So you feel it's been painted the
:20:16. > :20:19.way he typically paints? Oh yes, absolutely. I think the way
:20:19. > :20:22.that paint's been put on, that's totally his signature.
:20:22. > :20:26.So, do you think these two paintings are by the same hand?
:20:26. > :20:29.Yes, I would say without any doubt. Nick?
:20:29. > :20:32.I'm quite happy to have somebody prove otherwise but as far as I am
:20:33. > :20:36.concerned they've got an awful lot to prove wrong. Over to you. Well,
:20:36. > :20:43.I don't really know what to make of that. I've just had a very personal,
:20:43. > :20:46.visual reading of those two She's pretty certain they're
:20:46. > :20:49.Wallis's, but to be able to take them to auction with confidence
:20:49. > :20:59.it's going to be Nick's technical tests that will probably win the
:20:59. > :21:09.
:21:09. > :21:12.If our two paintings are real, they could go for up to �30,000 each at
:21:12. > :21:16.auction, but crucially Wallis's work didn't start to command high
:21:16. > :21:19.prices until the 1970s. That's critical for our investigation.
:21:19. > :21:23.Since they weren't worth anything when Wallis was painting in the 30s
:21:23. > :21:25.and 40s, no-one bothered to forge them. So, if they date from that
:21:25. > :21:29.period, they're almost certainly genuine.
:21:29. > :21:32.One week later and I'm back in London for the results of our final
:21:32. > :21:35.tests. Fake or fortune? I'm about to find out.
:21:35. > :21:42.Tiny samples from our pictures have been microscopically analysed to
:21:42. > :21:46.look for specific elements that will help in the dating process.
:21:46. > :21:49.There are a couple of key things that came out of this, one of which
:21:49. > :21:52.is that we've got a lot of titanium there. Titanium is associated with
:21:52. > :21:55.a very important 20th century pigment called titanium white, and
:21:55. > :21:58.we didn't find something else which we expected which was lead white.
:21:58. > :22:04.Lead white has been used by artists for centuries and so it was very
:22:04. > :22:09.surprising not to find it. Digging deeper, Nick has also found
:22:09. > :22:12.a specific blue pigment which means he can finally date our paintings.
:22:12. > :22:15.What we found is that the titanium white and the thalacimine blue
:22:15. > :22:21.really pushes the date of these paintings beyond the lifespan of
:22:21. > :22:24.Alfred Wallis. That also becomes important that we haven't found any
:22:24. > :22:27.lead because lead white, I think people are probably familiar that
:22:28. > :22:31.lead has come out of paints over the last few decades and in the
:22:31. > :22:33.1970s it was banned, so to not find it suggests that you've got
:22:34. > :22:43.something that was relatively recent when lead was not being used
:22:43. > :22:51.So one thing we can say for certain is these were not by Alfred Wallis.
:22:51. > :22:54.I think that's the conclusion of But this isn't all Nick's found.
:22:54. > :22:58.Jennifer asked him to test for nicotine or dirt and he's made a
:22:58. > :23:02.surprising discovery. It's not nicotine, what we found is
:23:02. > :23:08.that actually that it's mainly starch. We can actually see these
:23:08. > :23:16.individual starch grains. You can see these bright particles with the
:23:16. > :23:20.dark cross in them, classic starch. And this would have been done to
:23:20. > :23:27.give a visual age to the painting, or would it have been for another
:23:27. > :23:29.reason? It's very difficult to say at this point, there are different
:23:29. > :23:32.things that it might come from, certainly one of the
:23:32. > :23:34.interpretations is that somebody wanted to give it an aged
:23:34. > :23:36.appearance. Detailed photographs have also
:23:36. > :23:43.revealed a forger's hand - and confirm the suspicion Robert Jones
:23:43. > :23:46.had about the ship's rigging. somebody who's copying or
:23:46. > :23:53.immitating something, they tend to copy much more literally what they
:23:53. > :23:56.see on a painting. What we see here is the rigging has been painted in,
:23:56. > :23:59.but the cross strokes only go up to the mast and you would have
:23:59. > :24:02.expected I think somebody like Wallis who was very concerned with
:24:02. > :24:12.the accuracy of the ships to have painted the rigging correctly and
:24:12. > :24:14.
:24:15. > :24:18.run it right through. So, what can we categorically say
:24:18. > :24:20.about these two paintings? I think from the analysis we can be pretty
:24:20. > :24:23.confident and say they are not by Wallis.
:24:23. > :24:25.We can make some suggestions about the most likely time frame they
:24:26. > :24:35.were produced, something towards the 1970's onwards would be a good
:24:36. > :24:38.
:24:38. > :24:41.This is a huge disappointment but not the end of our story.
:24:41. > :24:45.Whatever the results, the plan was to sell these pictures, but now the
:24:45. > :24:49.auctioneer only has one option when it comes to listing them.
:24:49. > :24:51.Well, I think the trouble is we have got to go through due
:24:51. > :24:53.diligences really and if we know diligences really and if we know
:24:53. > :24:55.that they're fake we can't catelogue them with anything other
:24:55. > :25:05.than telling the public the than telling the public the
:25:05. > :25:05.
:25:05. > :25:08.information that we've got. What are we going to be putting on
:25:08. > :25:12.them as an estimate? I think low hundreds, as soon as
:25:12. > :25:15.you start putting on more than 100- 150 on each one of them people are
:25:15. > :25:18.then thinking, well, why such a high estimate if they are wrong?
:25:18. > :25:28.This is the worst possible outcome for our dealer and now I have to
:25:28. > :25:30.
:25:30. > :25:33.Hello, Dave, it's Curtis. Don't forget he spent around �1,000
:25:33. > :25:37.each on these paintings, hoping that they might just turn out to be
:25:37. > :25:46.the real thing. With the best will in the world,
:25:46. > :25:52.Wallis could not have painted these. There's no lead in it, it's
:25:52. > :25:54.conducive with the 70s. If we do go to auction he stands to make a big
:25:54. > :25:57.loss, and the decision really has to be his.
:25:57. > :26:00.To be honest, they're worth more than that to me, even as copies.
:26:00. > :26:10.So, do you want me to leave you to ponder it?
:26:10. > :26:11.
:26:11. > :26:14.Leave it with me overnight and I'll By 41, Wallis had become an
:26:14. > :26:21.isolated figure, shunned by most of his neighbours and the St Ives art
:26:21. > :26:24.community, who couldn't understand why he needed to paint. Unable to
:26:24. > :26:34.look after himself, he ended up in the poor house near Penzance as
:26:34. > :26:37.
:26:37. > :26:40.He died at the age of 87, and would have been buried in a pauper's
:26:40. > :26:43.grave, if some of his loyal artist friends hadn't stepped in to help.
:26:43. > :26:48.They brought him home to this spot, overlooking the sea that he loved
:26:48. > :26:51.so much. A gravestone, made by the potter Bernard Leach, marks the
:26:51. > :27:01.final resting place of a man now regarded as one of the forefathers
:27:01. > :27:04.
:27:05. > :27:11.A week later, the auction in London is underway, but will our paintings
:27:11. > :27:14.go under the hammer? The dealer's had a good think and
:27:14. > :27:24.he's decided not to put them into auction, which is why I've got
:27:24. > :27:25.
:27:25. > :27:28.these two blank spaces behind me. If they'd gone to auction today
:27:28. > :27:31.they'd be catalogued as fakes, but who's to say that they wouldn't
:27:31. > :27:33.surface in 12 months' time at an auction house near you, saying
:27:33. > :27:36.they're real Wallis's with a completely different provenance?
:27:36. > :27:40.It's exactly the right thing to do on this occasion, and it's not that
:27:40. > :27:46.they just won't be going to auction today - they won't be going to
:27:46. > :27:54.In time, the owner of our paintings might want to do his own research
:27:54. > :27:56.and with big money at stake who can blame him? But for the moment, I'm
:27:56. > :27:59.pleased that we're protecting Wallis's legacy by weeding out two
:27:59. > :28:03.pictures that don't seem to fit with his remarkable body of work.
:28:03. > :28:08.We set out to find the truth and I hope we've done that. Wallis would
:28:08. > :28:11.be amazed at what his paintings can fetch at auction. But he was a man
:28:11. > :28:14.who lived his life in relative poverty who didn't care how much
:28:14. > :28:17.they sold for, he just cared about his art and I think there's a
:28:17. > :28:22.lesson we can all learn from that.You shouldn't be buying
:28:22. > :28:26.paintings just for investment. You should not be buying them because
:28:26. > :28:32.you love them, and that way you're never going to feel ripped off and
:28:32. > :28:38.you're always going to have something to treasure. -- and you