[MSN] The auction house, the fashion designer, and the £78,000 refund. Art market Sotheby's reimbursed Jasper Conran - but there are fresh questions over resale of misdated fakes.

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The auction house, the fashion designer, and the £78,000 refund


Art market Sotheby's reimbursed Jasper Conran - but there are fresh
questions over resale of misdated fakes 

Charlotte Higgins, arts correspondent
Wednesday November 8, 2006
The Guardian 


Sotheby's has been forced to reimburse the fashion designer Jasper Conran
£78,000 after a pair of portraits sold as 16th-century originals were
revealed as 18th-century fakes.
The move came after a blunder by the head of British paintings at Sotheby's,
David Moore Gwyn, who misdated the works when they were put into an auction
in 2005, even though other experts claim to have seen "at first glance" that
they were pastiches.

The portraits, which after the reimbursement to Conran became the property
of Sotheby's, are to come under the hammer again on November 23, with an
estimate of £40,000-£60,000. But Sotheby's stands accused of misleading
potential buyers, since no reference to the true date of the works is made.
Instead, the catalogue calls them "magnificent", and describes them as in
the "manner of Robert Peake the Elder c1551-1619". However, the later date
renders them, in the words of one respected dealer, "complete tat and worth
a few grand at best as decoration".

The saga began last year, when the family seat of the former Conservative
treasurer and chief whip Lord Hesketh - Easton Neston, near Towcester in
Northamptonshire - was sold off. The contents, auctioned over six sessions
between May 17 and 19 2005, included a staggering array of treasures which
sold for a total of £8.7m.
Specialist

A pair of portraits of Sir George and Lady Mary Fermor, ancestors of Lord
Hesketh, were among the lots. Art dealer Christopher Foley, one of many
interested buyers and a specialist in 16th and 17th-century English
paintings, visited before the sale. "I viewed the pictures at Easton Neston
carefully on behalf of the National Trust," he told the Guardian. "I bought
back on their behalf a number of pictures there which had formerly been in a
Hesketh house in Lancashire and which is now National Trust.

"Both I and the trust's art specialist dismissed the two [Fermor] portraits
as wildly out of period at first glance. The painting technique was not
remotely correct, the panels were of the wrong type of wood, the
compositions of a style at odds with a dating to the late 16th century. They
were obviously fanciful. I remember remarking to two other dealers at the
time when standing in front of them that the cataloguing seemed absurdly
optimistic."

The general view in "the trade" is that the paintings were produced at some
time in the 18th century, probably at the behest of a later Fermor who
wished to have some grand-looking family portraits to give his pedigree a
bit of class. "About as valid, chronologically, as getting Damien Hirst to
paint the Duke of Wellington," according to one dealer.

The works' estimate at the time of the sale was £100,000-£150,000. But such
were the doubts among specialist dealers that they sold for well below that.
The new owner turned out to be Jasper Conran, who paid £78,000, thought to
be the reserve price.

The question remains: how did Sotheby's head of British pictures, David
Moore Gwyn - one of the leading experts in his field - get it so wrong?
"We're not perfect," Mr Moore Gwyn told the Guardian. "We do our best. I
thought they were of the period."

The paintings needed conservation work. The restorer employed began to doubt
the pictures' authenticity, and sent them to Ian Tyers, a leading
practitioner in the field of dendrochronology, a technique which can date
with precision when a tree was felled by analysing rings in a piece of wood.

"We were asked to look at the wooden panels on which these works were
painted, which is something we are asked to do not uncommonly to verify what
they are," said Dr Tyers. "In this case, however, our research unverified
what they were.

"Our findings demonstrated clearly that they were not what they were sold
as. The panels are in fact early 18th century - not, in other words, what
they were thought to be. They were sold as being by followers of Peake,
dated to around 1580 or 1590. The trees from which the panel were made were
still growing then." Dr Tyers was unsurprised by his findings. "My sense is
that many people in the trade knew what they were all along," he said.

Property

Conran went back to Sotheby's and his money was reimbursed. The paintings
became the property of the auction house - and have quietly reappeared in a
Sotheby's sale. There is no reference on the catalogue page to the fact that
these are known to be 18th century, and the description of them as "manner
of Robert Peake the Elder c1551-1619" is, arguably, misleading. In addition,
the works are illustrated, in a catalogue that is arranged broadly
chronologically, among Elizabethan and Jacobean works rather than 18th
century paintings.

According to Mr Foley, "to call them 'magnificent', as they do in the new
catalogue is, well, completely over the top - and the new estimate of
£40-£60,000 seems, shall we say, rather enthusiastic for a pair of 18th
century pastiches in very fragile condition." He believes that an estimate
of £10,000 gives a more reasonable indication of their value.

Challenged on the description of the works, Mr Moore Gwyn said that "in the
manner of" gave a clear indication of the works' date: "If you look it up in
the glossary you will see that it is our way of saying 'painted at a later
date'."

Asked about the apparent failure of the catalogue to make clear that the
works are now the property of Sotheby's, Mr Moore Gwyn pointed out that a
triangle-shaped symbol in the paintings' catalogue entry signified "property
of Sotheby's" - again, a definition available by reference to a glossary.

Asked about the omission of the real date of the works, he said: "This is
our normal format. It has been like this for 30 years. To anyone who asks
me, I say they are 18th century. We are not intending to deceive in any way.
I am happy to put up a note next to the painting [in the auction house]
saying they are 18th century. I agree that maybe some people won't know what
'in the manner of' means." As for the estimate, he said: "Well, I don't
know: we'll have to see. Estimates are only estimates, and they come from
one's experience."

Peake practice

The portraits of Sir George Fermor and his wife Mary were originally
attributed by Sotheby's to the circle of Robert Peake. The Lincolnshire
painter was born around 1551, trained as a goldsmith and by 1576 was
recorded as being in the pay of the Office of Revels as a decorative painter
at the court of Elizabeth I. Early in the reign of James I he became
principal picture maker at the court of James's eldest son, Henry, Prince of
Wales - promoting the young prince and putative king of England and Scotland
as a dashing warlike figure and a gifted horseman. The prince died in 1612
aged 18. Peake's portrait's of Lady Elizabeth Pope and her sister-in-law
Lady Anne Pope are in the Tate; the Met in New York has a portrait of Henry
and another of his younger sister, Elizabeth, later Queen of Bohemia.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/