In this artwork, how is the Investigation of the Fake or Fortune? investigation elucidated?
Journalist Fiona Bruce and art dealer and historian Philip Mould investigated the painting in the first episode of the first series of the TV programme Fake or Fortune?, first aired on 19 June 2011. The widely accepted authority on Monet's work is the catalogue raisonné published by the Wildenstein Institute in Paris. One challenge Bruce and Mould faced was that the Wildenstein Institute had already examined the painting once, after the death of Daniel Wildenstein, not accepting it as genuine.The programme had the picture scanned, the paints analysed, and the brushwork and signature examined by experts. The programme argued that the painting was genuine, an opinion shared by a number of experts. However the Wildenstein Institute did not accept their arguments, and maintains that the painting is a fake, based predominantly on the connoisseurship of the late Daniel Wildenstein.
The Institute has since been provided with further evidence suggesting the painting is genuine, but the Wildenstein Institute has not changed its verdict and the painting remains excluded from its catalogue raisonné. Prominent art experts Joachim Pissarro, Charles Stuckey and Richard Brettell reject the painting’s authenticity.Joel went to court in 2014 to force the Wildenstein Institute to include the work. He lost the case, appealed, and received a final verdict the courts would not intervene in December 2015.
Richard Brettell Fake or Fortune? Charles Stuckey Daniel Wildenstein Joachim Pissarro connoisseurship Philip Mould Fiona Bruce Wildenstein Institute