I simply could not understand why – it gave me sleepless nights given the overpowering circumstantial evidence we had garnered.
#WINSTON CHURCHILL PAINTING BURNED SERIES#
Mr Mould, whose new Fake of Fortune? series is in production, said: “In over 30 programmes, I used always to quote this - until now - as one of our most unsatisfactory endings. On Saturday, Mr Henty said: “This confirms what we knew all along.” Although the farm had to be sold, he cannot sell the painting: “It has such a connection and personal story to it now, I couldn’t bear to.” Mould had estimated then that, if authenticated, the picture could be worth more than £200,000, as Churchill’s pictures fetch top prices. The St-Paul painting is owned by Charles Henty, clerk to the Worshipful Company of Innholders, who had been disappointed by its 2015 rejection as he needed funds to save a family farm. In the mid-1930s, Churchill was out of office, but warning the world of the rise of Fascism. That suggests a possible date for the St-Paul painting.
#WINSTON CHURCHILL PAINTING BURNED ARCHIVE#
I believe the mis-titling of the work as Red Rocks might have left the painting in limbo forever, because only a person looking for this image would connect it.”Īn unidentified figure in a dark robe stands next to the painting, but another photograph in the same archive shows Churchill wearing that robe at the fabulous nearby Chateau de l’Horizon, which he is known to have visited around 1935. He writes of stumbling across the clinching St-Paul photograph at Chartwell last year: “The title on the card was Red Rocks, but it was clear that it was of the BBC painting. The programme ended with Mr Mould suggesting that evidence might one day emerge, adding: “You could say that Churchill lives to fight another day.” Although the picture had been found in the 1960s, in the coal-shed of a London house once owned by Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, Churchill experts still required further evidence. They believed in the attribution, along with Mr Rafferty, who detected Churchill’s pencil-marks and palette of colours. The episode, presented by Philip Mould and Fiona Bruce, had established that the painting depicted St-Paul-de-Vence and unearthed evidence placing the great man at the scene. Its foreword is by Prince Charles, who pays tribute to him “for painting such a vivid picture of the artist, Winston Churchill”.īut perhaps the most significant discovery was succeeding where the BBC failed. It is among dozens of exciting new discoveries about Churchill’s paintings which Mr Rafferty is to publish in a forthcoming book titled Winston Churchill: Painting on the French Riviera, following five years’ of research. “This photograph is undeniable,” Mr Rafferty told the Telegraph. It had been overlooked because it had been mis-titled, but it means that Churchill experts have finally authenticated the picture. Now British artist Paul Rafferty has uncovered a “smoking gun”, a thumbnail photograph of that very painting - the fountain of St-Paul-de-Vence - at Chartwell, Churchill’s family home in Kent. Art detectives on the BBC’s Fake or Fortune? television series tried in vain in 2015 to prove that a painting of a sun-drenched village scene on the French Riviera was by Sir Winston Churchill.īut experts on the wartime leader rejected the attribution, partly because there was not enough documentary evidence.
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