Fake Or Fortune: Season 7
 (2011)
TV Series  /  Documentary, Special Interest
In Collection
#135
0*
Seen ItYes
USA / English
Blu-ray Disc  Region 1
Fiona Bruce Herself - Presenter
Philip Mould Himself - Presenter
Director
Nicky Illis
Robert Murphy
Producer Nicky Illis
Robert Murphy
Musician William Goodchild

Journalist Fiona Bruce teams up with art expert Philip Mould to investigate mysteries behind paintings. It's a world of subterfuge and intrigue as they grapple with complex battles often unseen beneath the apparently genteel art establishment.
Episodes
    Seen it: Yes   60 mins    8/12/2018  1.  Nicholson
Can the team prove that a beautiful still life of a glass jug and pears is the work of celebrated British artist William Nicholson?
    Seen it: Yes   60 mins    8/19/2018  2.  Toulouse-Lautrec
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould head to France to take on a testing challenge - can they reverse an art world decision which one owner refuses to accept? Two sketchbooks found in a garden shed in St Emilion were given to a teenage boy, Alain, by his grandmother back in 1965. Although she never revealed where they came from, they were thought to be the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the aristocratic artist born in 1864 known for his atmospheric depictions of Parisian nightlife. Alain waited 50 years before he decided to present the sketches to the French committee responsible for authenticating the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. Unfortunately, the committee did not accept them as the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and stated they were the work of another artist - Rene Princeteau - meaning they are worth just a few thousand pounds instead of many hundreds of thousands. For Fiona and Philip, this is on one of their toughest investigations - if they are to prove the sketches are by Toulouse-Lautrec, they must not only discredit them as the work of Rene Princeteau but also persuade a respected committee to change their mind. The sketchbooks are brimming with drawings - beautiful and characterful images of women, horses, sailors, soldiers and dogs. If they are the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, they are not the kind of images for which is he best known. Some of the pages are dated 1880, which would mean they are the work of the teenage Toulouse-Lautrec, and little is known about this period of his work. In their quest, the team journey to the beautiful town of Albi in southern France, where Toulouse-Lautrec was born, and visit the grand family home, Chateau du Bosc, where the artist spent much of his youth. With so little evidence to go on, Fiona and Philip scour the rooms for clues that might link the life of Toulouse-Lautrec to drawings in Alain's sketchbooks. Technical analysis is also vital, but Fiona and Philip are still piecing together their scientific evidence when the Toulouse-Lautrec committee announces that it's meeting - soon. It's a deadline they can't miss, but can they put together a compelling case in time?
    Seen it: Yes   60 mins    8/26/2018  3.  Henry Moore
The team investigate whether a small watercolour sketch could be by the British 20th-century sculptor Henry Moore. It is the only piece thought to be a British artist in a Nazi hoard of around 1,500 works discovered in Germany in 2012. Known as the Gurlitt hoard, it is now housed in the Museum of Fine Art in Bern, Switzerland. Every piece in the hoard has to be researched, as if it was art stolen or looted from Jewish families, it should be returned. Fiona and Philip need to establish two things - firstly whether this a genuine work by Henry Moore or a whether it is a fake, And secondly, if it is genuine, how did a sketch by a British artist end up in a Nazi art hoard? The answer to this will decide it's fate. The film goes on a journey from prewar Britain, where the little-known Henry Moore was beginning to make waves as a daring and progressive sculptor, to Germany in the 1930s. In England Philip meets Henry Moore's only child Mary, hoping that she will offer some insights into the way her father worked, and he asks if she can see her father's hand in the sketch. He compares the sketch to other genuine works by Moore from the time and subjects it to forensic tests. Will this reveal the smoking gun that would firmly put the name Henry Moore to this small drawing? In Germany, Fiona is on the provenance trail. She discovers that in the early 1930s, Hildebrand Gurlitt, the man who amassed this valuable hoard, was a forward-looking museum curator who encouraged the avant garde artists like Henry Moore. But this wasn't to last. In 1933 Hitler consolidated his power in Germany and set out to purge the country of any modern progressive art - or what the Nazi called degenerate art. Hildebrand Gurlitt lost his job but in an extraordinary transformation used his knowledge of the art Hitler hated to become one of four dealers allowed to sell degenerate art on the international market to make money for the Nazi regime. Could the sketch have been one that Hitler wanted to supress? And if so, how and when did Hildebrand Gurlitt get his hands on it? Fiona follows the trail to Berlin and to the Schonhausen Palace, where a lot of the so-called degenerate art was stored and viewed by the chosen few dealers. Could this have been where Hildebrand Gurlitt had the opportunity to buy the Moore sketch? Will the art investigators find enough evidence to convince the Henry Moore Review Panel that this is a genuine early work by Henry Moore? Will the outcome of the provenance search show that it was legitimately bought by Hildebrand Gurlitt and so can rightfully stay in the museum in Bern?
    Seen it: Yes   60 mins    9/2/2018  4.  A Double Whodunnit
Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould investigate the origins of two paintings by unknown artists dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, which unusually for the period, depict black subjects. One is a portrait of Dido Belle, a famous former slave adopted into an aristocratic English family in the 1760s, while the other depicts two children against a tropical landscape, and is believed to have been painted as a protest against the slave trade.
    Seen it: Yes   60 mins    9/9/2018  5.  Giacometti
Fiona Bruce and art expert Philip Mould investigate the first work of sculpture featured on the show, an unusual piece called The Gazing Head, which may have been made by Alberto Giacometti in 1930s Paris. The quest to uncover the truth is complicated by the fact that the sculpture was once broken into several pieces by a cat.
Edition Details
Series Fake or Fortune
No. of Discs/Tapes 1
Personal Details
Location Case #5
Links TheTvDb.com