Portrait of Olivia Boteler Porter, a Stewart lady in waiting, had been believed to be an undistinguished 19th-century copy
A painting that has been languishing in a museum store for decades, regarded as an undistinguished copy, has been confirmed as a 17th-century original by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, one of the most fashionable and expensive artists of his day.
The woman, with a red flower in her hair and spectacular pearl earrings, has been identified as a portrait of Olivia Boteler Porter, a lady in waiting to Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, and valued at up to £1m.
Her husband, Endymion Porter, was a friend of the artist and the portrait was painted shortly before her early death in 1633.
It is owned by the Bowes Museum, in Durham, where it was thought to be a 19th-century copy after Van Dyck.
However, in a process tracked in a BBC2 Culture Show special to be shown tonight, the painting was cleaned and restored, removing centuries of grime and old varnish, dated from a paint sample and then studied by art experts including Christopher Brown, director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, an internationally acclaimed expert on Van Dyck, who confirmed it was the genuine article.
The painting returned to the limelight when it was photographed in 2008, along with the rest of the Bowes painting collection, by the Public Catalogue Foundation which is compiling an inventory of all art in Britain in public ownership. The image was later uploaded to the BBC Your Paintings website.
Dr Bendor Grosvenor, Culture Show presenter, art historian and dealer said: "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. Although as part of our national heritage values are irrelevant, for insurance purposes it should now be valued at anything up to £1m. Had it appeared at auction as a copy and in its dirty state, it would probably only have been estimated at about three to five thousand." Reported by guardian.co.uk 12 hours ago.
A painting that has been languishing in a museum store for decades, regarded as an undistinguished copy, has been confirmed as a 17th-century original by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, one of the most fashionable and expensive artists of his day.
The woman, with a red flower in her hair and spectacular pearl earrings, has been identified as a portrait of Olivia Boteler Porter, a lady in waiting to Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, and valued at up to £1m.
Her husband, Endymion Porter, was a friend of the artist and the portrait was painted shortly before her early death in 1633.
It is owned by the Bowes Museum, in Durham, where it was thought to be a 19th-century copy after Van Dyck.
However, in a process tracked in a BBC2 Culture Show special to be shown tonight, the painting was cleaned and restored, removing centuries of grime and old varnish, dated from a paint sample and then studied by art experts including Christopher Brown, director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, an internationally acclaimed expert on Van Dyck, who confirmed it was the genuine article.
The painting returned to the limelight when it was photographed in 2008, along with the rest of the Bowes painting collection, by the Public Catalogue Foundation which is compiling an inventory of all art in Britain in public ownership. The image was later uploaded to the BBC Your Paintings website.
Dr Bendor Grosvenor, Culture Show presenter, art historian and dealer said: "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. Although as part of our national heritage values are irrelevant, for insurance purposes it should now be valued at anything up to £1m. Had it appeared at auction as a copy and in its dirty state, it would probably only have been estimated at about three to five thousand." Reported by guardian.co.uk 12 hours ago.