Monday 11 March 2013

Van Dyck masterpiece discovered

Posted by Unknown | 02:06 Categories: ,

The story of how the masterpiece, which languished in a storeroom at the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, County Durham, will be told on the BBC2 Culture Show at 6.30 pm tonight.

It is one of 210,000 artworks which have been photographed and put online as part of the Public Catalogue.

The 72.4 x 61 cm oval oil painting aroused the interest of Bendor Grosvenor who suspected there could be more to the picture than first thought.

What followed was a prolonged exercise in detective work in which the painting was taken on an Odyssey by Alastair Sooke, the presenter and Telegraph art critic.

First the paint itself was analysed to establish the work was created in the 1630s.

At the same time the archive at the National Gallery was used to verify the sitter was Olivia Boteler Porter, a lady in waiting to Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles 1.

Then the thick layer of varnish and grime was removed which enabled the picture to verified as a Van Dyck Christopher Brown, Director of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology.

“To find a portrait by Van Dyck is rare enough, but to find one of his 'friendship' portraits like this, of the wife of his best friend in England, is extraordinarily lucky,” Dr Grosvenor said.

“Although as part of our national heritage values are irrelevant, for insurance purposes it should now be valued at anything up to £1 million.

“Had it appeared at auction as a copy, and in its dirty state, it would probably only have been estimated at about £3-5,000.”


View the original article here

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