Newly discovered Turners everywhere?
September 21 2012
Picture: Guardian
Hot on the heels of last week's '£20 million Turner discovery', here's another '£20 million Turner discovery'. From The Guardian:
Experts will present evidence next week claiming to have uncovered a long-lost painting by JMW Turner, bought for £3,700 but now valued by one insurance firm at £20m.
Jonathan Weal, 54, who works for an art investment fund, spotted the seascape eight years ago in an auction at a Kent golf club.
After years of research, his belief in the work – entitled Fishing Boats in a Stiff Breeze – has apparently been backed by art experts and by scientific tests that investigated everything from pigments to the signature. He said Hiscox, the specialist art insurers, had valued the work at £20m.
Dr Selby Whittingham, a Turner scholar and a former curator at Manchester City Art Gallery, has described it as an exciting discovery. He will be among specialists attending a conference on the painting at the Dulwich Picture Gallery on Wednesday.
Tests to be presented include a report by Art Access & Research, a specialist in the scientific analysis of paintings. Its investigations focus on pigments and techniques whose introduction or disuse can be dated.
Its report concludes: "Work thus far has not revealed any features wholly inconsistent with the hypothesis that the painting was executed by Turner in 1805."
This all sounds most exciting. But I've checked with other more prominent Turner scholars, and they haven't been shown this picture yet. So while there's every chance it could indeed be an important discovery, it is open to the charge of being yet another case of premature attribution.
