Original subtitles

At 42 million... The art world, where paintings change hands for fortune.

Thank you very much.

But for every known masterpiece, there may be another still waiting to be

discovered. That is massively encouraging.

International art dealer Philip Mould and I have teamed up to hunt for lost

by great artists.

We use old -fashioned detective work and state -of -the -art science to get to

the truth.

Science can enable us to see beyond the human eye.

I don't believe it.

Every case is packed with surprise and intrigue. Like a challenge.

Who am I?

But not every painting is quite what it seems.

Someone has put a signature on top.

Here. Dastardly. It's a journey that can end in joy.

You have an original thing.

Or bitter disappointment.

Depressing end to the day.

Sorry.

This time, could the pioneer of abstract art, Piet Mondrian, have created this

gorgeous little flower painting?

Through his lifetime, the flower has always been an important topic for him.

It looks the part, it's got his signature, and was once owned by several

prominent Dutch collectors and art dealers.

We have your picture, described as being by Piet Mondrian. Exactly.

No ifs, no buts. Exactly.

But all is not as it seems.

The leaf looks more like a dahlia. The trouble is, Mondrian's work is known to

have been faked, and his flower pictures have been a favourite of the forger's.

I have a file here that contains a couple of dozen.

Will scientific analysis help our case?

Goodness me, that's an extraordinary sort of firework, isn't it, really?

Or could there be a more sinister explanation?

The first thing that struck me was the F in Skidam.

As the scales tip one way, then the other, can we find out the truth?

Did your picture hang in that house? Well, of course it did.

In this episode, we're heading to Warwickshire in the West Midlands. We're

the heart of Shakespeare country.

This splendid Jacobean house is the family home of Jeffrey Kroll.

Hi, Jeffrey.

Hi there. Hi. Hi. Lovely to see you. He's an artist from the U .S. with

roots here. Nice to see you. Come on in.

Great. Jeffrey would like our help because he's inherited a mysterious

he hopes might be the work of one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th

century. So here's the painting.

Aha.

It's rather beautiful, isn't it? So delicate.

Yeah.

A portrayal of a single flower and, boldly signed in the

bottom left -hand corner, P. Mondrian, that great icon of 20th -century modern

art. I'm familiar, of course, with Mondrian's, you know, renowned works of

geometric lines.

But I had no idea he did flower pictures.

So he began life as a figurative painter, painting landscapes and

And you believe this to be by Mondrian?

In my gut as an artist, I do.

Born in 1872, Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter and a pioneer of 20th -century

abstract art.

He's famed for his abstract geometric paintings, characterised by straight

lines, grids and...

primary colors.

His bold, striking style had seeped into popular culture, inspiring fashion,

architecture, and advertising.

Lesser known is that Mondrian also made naturalistic works.

Throughout his career, he created more than a hundred flower pictures.

Could Geoffrey's picture be one of them?

Where did you get this painting?

I inherited it from my mother.

who was gifted it many years ago, probably over 25 years ago, by a friend

hers, rather eccentric friend.

And do you know where the eccentric friend got it from then? We don't know.

So have you done anything yourself to try and prove that this might be by

Montreal? Yes, I have, indeed. I did some research and found that it was

rejected by the catalogue résumé. So before your mother had it, it had been

rejected by the catalogue résumé in the 1990s.

The Mondrian catalogue résumé, the definitive list of works by Mondrian,

originally compiled by two authorities, Robert Welsh and Joachim Jutten.

Jeffrey discovered that when they published it in 1998, they decided not

include the white chrysanthemum.

The authors have since died, and there's now a new authority on Mondrian, Vita

Coppice.

I decided to photograph and send it to Dr. Vitsa Kopes.

He wrote me a very polite letter back saying, Jeffrey, I am afraid to say that

cannot go against the judgment of my esteemed colleagues. He just slammed the

door shut, did he?

No, he said, if new things come to light, I have an open mind and a

to learn.

And there was one footnote to that. He did say that in all the pieces submitted

to me, yours is the only piece that sticks in my mind.

So he shut the door, but then thrillingly, the door has now been

ajar, hopefully to walk through.

If this is by Mondrian, what would it be worth? If this is by Mondrian, it's a

profoundly desirable thing.

His more naturalistic images like this are in vogue.

And I can see collectors being really taken by this.

£250 ,000 up to that amount, I would say.

Extraordinary, really.

And if it isn't?

Well, if it isn't, somewhere in the region of £200.

Sorry. Had to ask.

I know. Well, let's see if we can prove it's more than that.

Let's hope so.

There are several tantalising labels, inscriptions and stamps on the back.

that will need further investigation.

But first, I want to see whether the picture itself bears the hallmarks of a

genuine Mondrian.

So at first glance, this looks like a really well -executed horticultural

But there's something else going on here, and it makes it really

You can see just the suggestion of a vase.

And the effect is, to give the flower, the appearance that it's hovering

weightlessly in some type of ethereal space.

There also seems to be a really strong character to it, as if it's almost

expressing itself to you.

The way those two leaves fan out, almost like arms of someone with a rather

elaborate hat.

And then it is signed in the bottom left -hand corner.

So the double A was the Dutch way of spelling it, but that J is a deny.

It's a bit strange. It's definitely something we need to return to. But

no doubt, if this is by Mondrian, that clear signature is one of a job done.

It's a completed picture.

And wouldn't it be wonderful if this flower could live again as a work by

Mondrian?

To find out a bit more about this intriguing picture...

I'm joining Geoffrey in his artist's studio.

Oh, wow!

Whoa!

This is fantastic!

Thank you very much.

I want to cast my eyes over some evidence he's uncovered, dating from

mother's friend must have owned the picture.

What have you managed to find out?

Well, I found that it had been sold, if I may show you, at Bonham in 1993.

Oh, wow!

OK.

So Bonham's major auction house, Pitt Mondrian, White Chrysostom,

estimate £12 ,000 to £18 ,000.

Now it sold for £6 ,000, which is a lot less.

Yeah. But nonetheless, this is brilliant.

In 1993, we have your picture described as being by Pitt Mondrian. Exactly.

No ifs, no buts. Exactly.

If we do manage to establish it in your picture, is by Mondrian. Yes.

What would that mean for you?

Well, I think it will be a vindication of what I felt aesthetically about the

painting in my gut that this is a Mondrian.

Well, if it is by Mondrian, it's going to be a theoretically valuable picture.

Yeah. What do you think you'll do with it?

I'm just not sure.

Don't want to jinx it?

Don't want to jinx it.

Back in London, we're regrouping in the gallery for a closer look at the

provenance trail for Geoffrey's picture.

So I've got here a copy of the Bonhams catalogue. We've got a list of the

provenance here.

Yeah, and on the face of it, a nice dense and rich provenance.

According to the sales catalogue, the first owner was Harry Prince.

Then it says it went to Kunsthandel Kruger.

Then Bernard Hautacker.

And the most recent owners listed are Jacob... And this is Jan de Groot.

Well, what we want to do is try and compare those names. There's a wealth of

labels and writing on the back of the picture.

So let's start with the furthest back we can go, which is Harry Prince Skidam in

Holland. And I'm wondering if that is AP for Harry Prince there.

I think it is. I think that's the collector's mark.

Then we've got Kunsthandel Kruger & Company.

And there's lots of Kunsthandel. Look, these two labels here.

What does that say there?

Well, it's in Dutch, so I don't know what it says.

I thought you were a colleague lot.

You could read every language. Absolutely.

Vertabling, whatever that means.

Harry Prince.

Then LJ, maybe? Kruger.

Yes. Schiedam.

And this looks like a price. So, Florence, a thousand.

So, this looks to me like an art dealer.

So, it's gone from a collector to a dealer.

And then we've got this name, Bernard Houtaker, and a name here and an address

in Amsterdam.

So I presume that's another dealer.

Yeah, it would seem logical, wouldn't it?

And then this funny little stamp here in the corner.

I wonder whether that could relate to Houtaker. Yeah.

And then we have the most recent names in the Bonhams auction catalogue, which

is Jakob de Groot and Mrs Jan de Groot.

So we need to work out who they are.

I mean, on the face of it...

They're really rich provenance, lots of labels and intriguing sort of scribbles

and stamps.

And yet still, this was rejected in a letter.

Why?

Yes, I suppose the first thing we've got to do, as wonderful as this looks, is

drill into all of these names and see if we can find some corroborative evidence

that they did indeed own or the picture passed through them.

And then the other thing we need to do is have a look at that letter that

rejected it.

There must have been a reason.

I've come to The Hague, capital of the Netherlands, on the hunt for stylistic

evidence that might help prove Geoffrey's picture is indeed authentic.

Piet Mondrian.

was born here in 1872 and spent the early part of his career painting the

landscape, buildings and flowers of his homeland.

Could Geoffrey's picture be one of those?

I'm heading to the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. It holds the world's largest collection

of works by Mondrian from every stage of his career.

Despite Mondrian's evolution into abstract art, he never completely turned

back. on one of his earliest subjects.

It seems extraordinary in a way that one of the most famous figures to do with

the history of abstract art should have had such a soft spot for flowers.

And there's a lovely example here.

Simply as a piece of drawing, I think this is marvellous.

You feel that he's thought entirely round a flower head.

He's looked incisively into the petals. He's describing it perfectly.

The big question is, the brilliant scene here, is it to be found in Geoffrey's?

This, I think, sets a very high bar.

To look for a link between Geoffrey's picture and these genuine works, I'm

enlisting the help of a man who's profoundly familiar with Mondrian's

paintings. Hello, Duda. Hello, Philip.

The Kunstmuseum's Head of Collections, Doda Hardeman.

So, Doda, why were flowers so important to Mondrian?

Well, they represented life, so the birth of life, and then the blossoming,

the wilting.

You see that, for example, in the dying sunflowers, that he depicted these

flowers in several stages in life.

So when did he particularly paint flowers?

He made them throughout his life, from around 1900 until the 1930s. But most of

them were painted and drawn around 1908.

Around this point, Mondrian became influenced by a movement called

which believes that everything is interconnected, and his work took on a

spiritual dimension.

This is a beautiful example of that.

You really see in the background the resonance of the space around it.

Yes, I see that. He's painted the energy.

It's very obvious in this genuine lily, but Geoffrey's picture also has movement

and colour in its background.

And Jeffrey's picture has something else going for it. It's called white

chrysanthemum, and the chrysanthemum was one of Mondrian's favorite flowers.

The chrysanthemum was a very important flower for him, and this was a

flower. So in a sense it was designed by man, and it was a product of modernity.

He preferred to draw them as single flowers, not in a bouquet.

Looking at Geoffrey's picture, you can see all these individual elements.

A single white chrysanthemum on an energetic background.

It fits neatly within Mondrian's oeuvre.

Geoffrey and I have also come to the Netherlands, where we hope his picture

started its life.

Here in The Hague, the Netherlands Institute for Art History, known by its

initials, the RKD, holds the largest archives in the world relating to

including correspondence and records of the catalogue Redene writers, Robert

Welsh and Joop Joosten.

We're meeting the man in charge of the picture's fate, the world's current

authority on Mondrian, Wietse Koppers. Hi, Wietse.

Nice to meet you.

It's a pleasure.

Nice to meet you, Geoffrey.

What would it take to convince Wietse to give Jeffrey's picture a second look?

What I am missing at the moment is information on the provenance of the

And also technical analysis can, of course, be really important if you were

to compare this one with other works by Mondrian of flowers.

Then, you know, maybe the same technique, the same material is found in

works and it can be attributed.

Which is encouraging.

Yes.

Wietse has offered to help us and has dug out a pile of documents from the

archives relating to the original rejection of Jeffrey's picture.

And this is the file, and it contains several letters of rejection, I'm

Several? I think it's up to five, even.

Did you know that?

No. Wow.

So the first one, 2008, from Joep Joosten, who co -wrote the...

Catalogue resume.

Indeed. As I wrote already to your colleague, this is not a work by Peter

Mondrian.

2006.

Enough of your letter. I enclosed copies of a few letters I sent already.

It appears that Geoffrey's picture was submitted to Welsh and Euston a number

times over many years, and each time they rejected it.

The correspondence paper trail dates back to 1992.

It's hardly readable anymore.

But I did manage to make a transcript of the letter.

I have alas come to the conclusion that it is not at all likely to have been

produced by the artist himself.

That's pretty categorical.

The letter goes on to make stylistic comparisons with Mondrian's known works.

So he's basically saying it doesn't look like an early Mondrian or a late

Mondrian.

But that isn't the only issue the letter highlights.

Given the high prices which the flower pieces by Piet Mondrian of any period

currently attract, we may expect greater numbers of dubious flower pieces to

appear on the market, whether or not possessed by honestly believing owners.

I think what he's saying in a rather sort of highfalutin way is... It could

fake. Are there a lot of fake flower pictures?

I mean, I have a file here that contains a couple of dozen. You can glance

through it if you like.

Oh, you can see that's not Mondrian immediately.

Oh, God, no.

Dreadful.

With Mondrian being widely faked, we're clearly going to have to tread

carefully. I have to say this.

One thing in particular worrying me about Jeffrey's picture, the signature

the I looking like a J.

I'm nervous to hear Wieter's assessment.

It seems incredibly weird that somebody would misspell his own name. But there

is one other example that shows the same, the I that has been turned into a

almost. And that word is in the catalogue, doesn't it?

Another misspelled signature, but fully accredited as genuine.

How does Wiese explain that?

Robert Wiese says in the catalogue resume, between brackets, signed later,

question mark.

But we don't know what that means. It is known to have been the case that he

signed pieces later himself, but he also had a couple of friends to sign for

him. It usually referred to pieces he had done before leaving for Paris that

were left unsigned. And of course, somebody after Mondrian became a bit

famous, they wanted to have the signature on their work.

You've got to love the guy.

Might that explain why this is spelled wrong then?

Could be an explanation.

So it sounds like you've got a reasonably open mind at this stage and

some work to do.

Sounds like it.

While Fiona and Geoffrey look into the painting's history, back in London, I'm

heading to the Courtauld Institute, renowned across the world as the centre

excellence for the scientific study of art.

We've arranged for paper specialist Dr Nicholas Burnett to carry out a forensic

analysis of Geoffrey's picture.

He's starting.

by removing the perspex backing.

Hello Nicholas.

Hi Philip.

So what are your first impressions?

Well, there's plenty of potential provenance to get your teeth into.

But see though, what we've got.

Now we see the whole sheet.

The back of the picture is covered with more plastic.

We need to remove it.

to get a better look at those stamps and inscriptions.

Look, there's some more information you've just revealed. Now, what does it

It looks like number 171 AP.

AP. So, possibly in reference to Harry Prince, the collector.

Seems an awful lot of trouble for a forger to go to, just to...

add and then conceal another bit of information like that. Yeah, if it's a

someone's gone to a lot of trouble to give a lot of evidence of provenance.

For this to be authentic Mondrian, we're hoping it's going to be datable to the

first two and a half decades of the 20th century.

Looking at the paper, can you give us some reassurance that it might be of

date?

Well, um...

It's got a bit of shive in it, which is little bits of vegetable matter.

I can see them catching the light, sort of impurities.

They're impurities.

Things like bits of bark.

Wouldn't really expect those in modern paper, but it's typical of the period.

The first two and a half decades of the 20th century.

Just so.

That's progress.

While Nicholas takes a closer look, back in the Netherlands, just a few miles

from The Hague, in the picturesque town of Schiedam.

Jeffrey and I have been doing some research into the labels on the back of

picture, trying to piece together more information about the former owners,

starting with Harry Prince, a well -respected Dutch author, who the

suggests was the first owner of the picture.

So this is the man, Harry Prince. Yeah. And he lived there, in that house there.

What a beautiful house.

And was your picture, did it belong to Harry Prince?

Did it hang in that house? Well, of course it did.

Prince's old house is not open to the public, but we have an appointment a

walk away.

Did Prince own Geoffrey's picture?

Unfortunately, there's no known inventory of Prince's collection, but

the beautiful Shkidam Library, local art historian Carlynde Young has picked out

some documents for us.

Hi. Colin Piena, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

Hello. Lovely to meet you.

Here is Arai Prins with his wife Nellie.

What a mustache.

What a mustache.

We know that he was a writer.

What else can you tell us about him? Well, he was a writer and of some

He wrote several novels and he contributed to a number of literary

He was also the director of a candle factory here in Schiedam.

And he really loved art and he built up this huge art collection.

Aha.

I found this article and it describes this art collection and it mentions

a few painters.

So Prince loved old masters. So he collected works by Pieter Bruegel the

Younger, Rembrandt. Wow.

So what about more modern artists? He was also interested in the

and I found this.

Artwork by the Dutch artist George Henrik Breitner, who was a friend of

So he was a serious art collector then. He was.

So in this article all about Harry Prince's collection, does it mention

Geoffrey's picture here?

I'm afraid not.

Oh. But the article does say that there are two rooms containing

a number of drawings and works on paper by modern masters.

It names a few names, it just doesn't mention all of them.

There is no record of Prince ever owning a Mondrian, let alone a specific

mention of Geoffrey's picture.

And since there are no stock books or catalogue for Prince's collection, it's

also impossible for us to find a reference to that handwritten number

found on the back of the paper.

But has Carlin at least found a connection between Prince and Mondrian?

There is a link to Mondrian.

Sounds promising.

And that link is Jan Toorop. Jan Toorop was a Dutch modern artist and he was

best friends with Arai Prins.

And Jan Toorop was also very good friends with Piet Mondrian.

Aha.

Mondrian... visited Jan Torop from 1908 every summer in Domburg, which was a

seaside town and an artist colony.

They'd paint together, they'd exhibit together. They even founded the Moderne

Kunstkring, the Modern Art Circle.

Gosh. So, I mean, this is a great connection, Jeff. Yes.

He's an art collector, he's an artist.

I mean, how likely is it that they met?

They would have met, don't you think? Yes, very likely. Isn't it, Caroline,

think? I think it's possible.

I'll buy a work on paper from Andrean. What is it? Some few guilders?

Whatever.

I love the way you just construct these meetings and conversations in your head.

But this is how things work.

Well, we haven't got cast iron proof of that, but I think this is very good,

though. Well, Caroline, thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Back at London's Courtauld Institute.

Head of Conservation, Professor Aviva Burnstock, has been forensically

Geoffrey's picture.

She's getting to grips with how it was painted and its multiple layers.

I'm hoping she can find evidence that shows Mondrian's hand at work.

So, I know you could, generally speaking, call this a watercolour, but

to me riddled with complexities.

I mean, what is going on here?

Well, it is really complicated.

I think it's made of quite a few different materials.

I think it started with a graphite pencil, which was used to make the neck

bottle. It was kind of rubbed out a bit. You can see that down here. But it's

also used elsewhere underneath some of the other materials.

So you think that this flower might have started as a simple pencil drawing?

Yes. And on top of that, there's been watercolour. It looks like the

washes of... Lots of different colours. And then on top of that, you've got

other thicker paint that looks like gouache.

There's also other coloured pencils or crayons.

And on top of that, you see reworking of the outline using different coloured

chalks or pastels or crayons.

OK, so properly mixed media. This is a real melange.

And a detail in the flower's head has caught Aviva's eye.

It looks like there are two different sorts of white here, sort of opaque

gouache white and then a more transparent white.

But unfortunately, under the microscope, I can't tell the difference between

different whites. I don't know what they are.

I'll have to do some other analysis to work that out.

And to my eye, that white is so defining. It's such a significant part

painting. I feel if we can get closer to understanding that, we could possibly

get closer to Mondria. OK, well, I'll try.

While Aviva takes a look beneath the surface, I'm focusing on the

Mondrian was very precise in his approach and could capture things with

impressive accuracy.

The auction catalogue referred to Geoffrey's picture as the White

But does it bear all the characteristics of that particular flower?

I've come to New Covent Garden Market in London to ask Darren French.

who buys and sells them every day.

Hello, Darren.

Hi, Phil.

So, I know you're a go -to man for chrysanthemums. First off, what do you

of ours?

Well, it's quite a spectacular painting, but I'm not completely sure it's a

chrysanthemum.

OK, so what concerns you about it, then?

Normally the chrysanthemums, the leaves are slightly alternate and they look as

though they're...

exactly opposite can i use this as an example as an example with a yeah

alternate and in that picture they're completely opposite to each other and

there's more of them and they're shinier and they're more uniform the leaf looks

more like a dahlia so is the flower head then more like a dahlia

so there's those types of dahlia There is those types of dahlia in the flower

head, but they're going back years. I do remember chrysanthemum bloom, which

looks like that, but not the leaf.

Thank you, Darren. Your thoughts have been illuminating on chrysanthemums, but

you've raised some slightly complicated issues here.

OK, well, I do apologise for that.

To be honest, this wasn't quite what I was expecting, and we know that Mondrian

was an exquisite draftsman. He could brilliantly portray what was in front of

him. But there are a few anomalies here to do with the leaves and the flower

head.

Could it be that this picture was not in fact painted from life, but rather a

pastiche, an imagined image?

If so, that would make it harder to argue that this is a genuine Mondrian.

With the science investigation well underway, I'm keen to find out more

the second name that appears on the back of Jeffrey's picture, handwritten as L

.J. Kruger, and on two labels, Kunsthandel Kruger.

We know that Kruger was an art dealer, and Kunsthandel was his gallery, based

The Hague.

The gallery ceased trading in 1930, but at the RKD archives they hold the stock

books for every transaction the gallery handled.

Jeffrey's picture should be listed there.

I've asked the researchers at RKD to look at Kruger's stock book, and they've

come back with their findings.

And unfortunately, they can't find any mention of Jeffrey's picture in Kruger's

stock book.

And in fact, in all Kruger's many years of trading, they can't find any

reference to him handling any Mondrian pictures at all.

So it's disappointing to say the least.

that I've drawn a blank with the first few names I've looked into.

Hopefully, I'll have better luck with the next one.

It's worrying that the provenance trail is proving tricky.

But back in London, I'm hoping that Aviva's analysis might provide more

news. She's using imaging techniques to reveal what the eye can't see.

The infrared camera can penetrate the layers of paint to highlight carbon

materials beneath, including graphite.

It's almost as if you can see the skeleton of the drawing now.

Yes.

And using ultraviolet light, those two whites Aviva spotted with a microscope

are accentuated.

These purpley areas are what I think is associated with the glossier, glass

-looking white.

And these matte areas, which look very bright in ultraviolet light, are

associated with another kind of white.

It's properly idiosyncratic. I mean, this feels like something that is...

begging to be analysed.

We need to be sure that all the pigments in Geoffrey's picture, including those

two whites, could have been used by Mondrian.

A handheld X -ray fluorescent spectrometer can detect the elements

pigments, and the MAXRF scanner creates maps of where those elements are

distributed.

Now Aviva can estimate the pigments used and whether they would have been

available. During Mondrian's lifetime, at last, it's the moment of truth.

Here are the element maps, and they're indicative of certain pigments, and I

explain what I think is there.

First, iron, the brown, orange and yellow washes, corresponding to earth

pigments.

Then manganese, indicating umber pigment.

Calcium, used for Prussian blue.

and also as a gouache thickener, and barium found in a variety of pigments.

So all things so far that you would have expected.

Absolutely. So what about the flower head? What about the two whites?

OK, so what you see here is the distribution of zinc.

You can see in the flower head here, zinc white was used.

And has zinc been used for many years?

Yeah, from all through the 19th century and into the 20th century, so nothing

unusual about that.

Okay. However, I did find something a little bit unusual.

Titanium.

Goodness me.

That's an extraordinary sort of firework, isn't it, really?

Yes, well, this is unusual and a bit surprising because titanium white was

available until the 1920s.

Titanium white was not available?

So this painting has got to have been done early 1920s at the earliest.

That's right.

Whilst we know that Mondrian painted flowers into the 1920s and beyond, the

stamp on the back of Geoffrey's picture suggests it was with Harry Prenz before

he died, which was in 1922.

Mondrian would have had to paint it and sell it to him just before that date,

and have used what would have been a very new pigment, titanium white.

It's a narrow window, but not impossible.

The discovery of titanium white is not great news.

So I've come to Amsterdam City Archives on the hunt for positive leads.

The next owner on the back of Jeffrey's picture is Bernard Houtaker.

I'm meeting archivist Mark Ponte and Ineke Hellingman, who worked for the

Houtaker family in the hope of proving Houtaker did indeed own Jeffrey's

picture. Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Fiona.

Nice to meet you. I'm Mark. Hi there.

Well, this is Bernard Houtenacker, and he was a very important art dealer here

in Amsterdam in the early 20th century.

He had a shop here in Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, which is the address that

on that stamp.

Ah, I see. Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 332, and traded mostly in old masters'

drawings, paintings, but also old books.

And if you look closely, you see a man looking into the window, seeing what

of art's on display.

Fantastic, looking into Bernard's gallery.

We know that Geoffrey's picture must have left Kruger's gallery before 1930

it closed.

Was it in Bernard Hautacker's gallery by then?

Mark has scoured Hautacker's archives to try and find a record of Geoffrey's

picture.

The stock books, do they show Geoffrey's picture in Bernard's possession?

No, I checked all the stock books and no Mondrian at all in there.

Well, he was a dealer in old masters, and there are occasionally some modern

paintings, drawings, but I haven't seen anything like it in the books.

Ah, another dead end. I've got one more stamp left to investigate, a small oval

one with the initials BH.

Is this proof that Hautaker once owned Geoffrey's picture?

Can you tell me anything about this one?

Yes, definitely.

That stamp I have here.

Oh, and that's it? And that's it.

Oh, wow.

How brilliant.

That's the stamp of his private collection.

I see.

And were there several of these?

No, only one.

Only one.

So if this stamp means that Jeffrey's picture was in Hautaker's personal

collection, that could explain why it's not mentioned in his gallery's stock

book.

But we need to be sure that Hautaker himself, or someone with the authority

do so, Use that stamp to make the mark on Geoffrey's picture.

Could someone have come and used it without the family's knowledge, do you

think? I don't think so, no. It was guarded very protectively by the family.

Someone could try and copy it, I suppose.

I don't think so. It's very, very detailed.

And does this look a genuine stamp to you?

I think it's genuine.

So this is good?

Yeah.

At last, a positive endorsement of one of the stamps on Geoffrey's picture.

But what I'm really hoping for is a mention somewhere in the archives of the

work itself.

Did Bernard Althacker have a list of his private collection?

The only list which exists is from 1963 of the usage of Bernard.

And there's no mentioning of his drawing.

Right. We've got a lot of work to do still.

Back in London, I'm meeting Philip at the gallery.

Normally, the detailed provenance and labels would be a cause for optimism.

But this time, not so much.

So I'm afraid I'm not having much luck with the provenance.

So, Ari Prince, the collector, can't find any evidence that Ari Prince

owned Geoffrey's picture.

Then it went through two dealers, Conferndal Kruger & Company and Bernard

Hautacker. Looking through their doc book, there's no reference to Geoffrey's

picture there either.

Nothing? Nothing.

I mean, to have a complete back with all three is concerning.

And then we're left with these two names, Jacob de Groot and Mrs Jan de

And according to the Bonham sale catalogue, they owned it prior to 1981.

Those are the most recent names. I mean, presumably that's an obvious place to

go. It is.

The RKD archives in the Netherlands hold a document with an address for Mrs.

Yandergroot, 1402 Sweetwater Drive, Arizona.

Bingo. I thought, sure.

But neither the Phoenix City Library nor the Arizona State Archive have any

record of that address existing or of a Jacob or Yandergroot living in the area

at the time.

So bit by bit, you've been annihilating this provenance.

I mean, you're meant to build it up. You've gone into reverse.

I know, but I'm really trying.

I mean, we've got another name to go on, because it looks like a bill of sale,

and it looks like the mysterious Mrs Yandergrove has sold the picture to the

Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. Now, does that ring any bells with you? It

does. Prominent gallery. Now, that must be a route.

Well, certainly, I'm going to look into it and see if I can finally get some

kind of result with that.

And, you know, I wish I could say I had better news, but this painting is made

with titanium white.

You can see it boldly fluorescing here.

Now, what we know is that it wasn't introduced until the very early 1920s.

the first part of that provenance that we've been looking at, Harry Prince,

well, Harry Prince, he dies in 1922.

So, therefore, we've only got barely a year's window.

for this picture to have been painted by Mondrian, and that is squeezing the

plausibility.

I'm returning to the Netherlands for one last throw of the dice.

We've asked experts here to analyse some of Mondrian's flower pictures from the

Kunstmuseum Den Haag's collection in order to identify key components of

authentic works.

We've also asked them to subject Geoffrey's picture to the same tests.

A favourable comparison might offer a lifeline, but any anomalies in

work could be damning.

This is the first time that Mondrian's works on paper have been looked into

such scientific rigour.

The question, however, is will what they discover also be found in Geoffrey's

picture?

I'm meeting Ines van der Werf and Birgit Reisland from the Cultural Heritage

Agency of the Netherlands to discuss their findings, starting with the paper

the underdrawings.

The originals are carried out on a typical early 20th century drawing

We found black chalk, gouache, as well as on one drawing also coloured crayons.

They are comparable to this picture.

Good. Well, it seems we're making some progress. OK, let's move on to the

controversial subject of the white. Have you found titanium in any of Mondrian's

works? As we now know, titanium white wasn't available to artists until the

early 1920s.

Its presence in Geoffrey's picture means it can't have been painted before then,

narrowing down the chances that Mondrian himself painted it.

If we can show that he used titanium white in similar genuine pictures, that

could greatly boost our case.

So in two of them there is definitely lead white, and in others we have zinc

white. But in all these works on paper we didn't find any titanium white.

That's disappointing.

While the technical analysis continues in the Netherlands, back in London...

I'm taking a closer look at the more recent provenance.

The person who offered Jeffrey's picture for sale in 1993 claimed it had once

belonged to the de Groot family, of whom there's no trace.

But I've come across some intriguing paperwork held in the Dutch archives.

In a letter to a prominent Mondrian expert, Professor Henkels, the seller

that the de Groot sold him the picture via the Sydney Janis Gallery in New York

in 1981.

and they claim the gallery even exhibited the picture.

Paperwork from the Sydney Janus Gallery appears to prove it.

This all looks great.

There's one problem, though.

Having contacted the Sydney Janus Gallery, they have no record of ever

exhibiting this picture or buying or selling it.

None.

So what this looks like is a fake provenance for Geoffrey's picture.

And that sounds massive alarm bells.

All the evidence at this stage is pointing towards a rather worrying

Back in the Netherlands, Innes and Burget have been able to add to Aviva's

analysis of the pigments using the studio's specialised equipment.

They have an important discovery to reveal.

In the green leaves, we found this telocyanine pigment, which was

artist's paints, 1938 -40.

Late 30s? Yes, that's correct.

The thing is that the white here under the leaves is on top of the green paint.

So a pigment that was not available until the very late 30s is to be

found... In the body of this picture?

Yes.

As a result of this discovery of phthalocyanine green, the dating band

to be Mondrian is now so much smaller, perhaps four years at the end of his

life.

And all that provenance now is redundant because the pigment wasn't around.

It now seems to me that we have entered the murky realm of...

potentially deliberate forgery.

Things are looking pretty grim for Geoffrey.

I need to update Geoffrey with this troubling development.

This, therefore, throws serious doubt over all the early provenance and likely

has some very troubling implications.

It's not good news.

It's not good news.

I don't know what to make of it, really.

It's very hard to figure that one out. But I do know that he painted flowers

entire life, right into the 1940s, actually.

So... Despite Geoffrey's determined optimism, we now have to take seriously

possibility that the picture is a fake Mondrian with a sophisticated forged

provenance. The picture first definitely emerged on the market at Bonhams in

July 1993.

This was a period when several high -profile art forgers were at work.

The jury took just five and a half hours to convict Drew of forgery, theft and

fraud.

John Drew and his accomplice were convicted in the mid -1990s for creating

works by famous painters.

Sean Greenhouse and his elderly parents were convicted in 2007.

for creating hundreds of fake works over many years.

And there were others.

During this period, the Metropolitan Police operated a specialist unit

investigating art crime run by Dick Ellis.

Now retired from the force, Dick has agreed to review the file on Geoffrey's

picture and he's coming to the gallery to reveal his findings.

Hello, Dick. Hi, Philip. Nice to see you.

Dick, you've crossed paths many times before.

This is Geoffrey. Geoffrey, hello.

Pleasure to meet you. So you've had the opportunity to look at all the evidence.

What do you think?

Well, I was immediately struck by the fact I thought I was looking at an old

friend.

In 1990 onwards, over a three -year period, I investigated a huge art fraud.

It was coins and medals, automobilia and art.

The perpetrator was a man called John Fairchild.

Right. He wasn't the artist.

He had other people manufacture.

So he would come up with the concept and he'd create this mass provenance around

the paintings or the objects, the coins.

And sometimes he would have his daughters take him to the auction house

would use false names.

Fairchild was...

finally arrested in Los Angeles.

And we extradited him back to the UK where he went on trial. And he pleaded

guilty to about 14, I think it was, counts of art fraud, deception, fraud.

Right. And he received a term of imprisonment.

And what makes you think specifically that Geoffrey's picture is connected to

the work of Fairchild?

Well, when I saw the back of the picture, I...

got up a slide that I have of a letter of provenance that purported to support

another of the forgeries that were produced, which were Hawaiian medals.

And the first thing that struck me was the S in skidam.

The slant of it. Yes, it's sort of teetering at an angle slightly, and yet

there's this great curve of the S. And if you look at the S...

that appears here in this Hawaiian consulate document that is actually a

forgery, you have exactly the same S.

And Dick has found other examples on the back of Geoffrey's picture of letters

worryingly similar to the forged document.

The A, the L and the M.

What about all the stamps on the back?

This is another aspect of the Fairchild forgeries.

If I show you here, these are illustrations of stamps that he used on

the forgeries that I saw. But if you look at that stamp and compare it again

the dealer's stamp on the bottom left of your picture, Geoffrey, there are,

again, similarities.

Clearly, Fairchild was capable of creating a stamp to copy the original

one. And worryingly for Geoffrey, Fairchild also created intricate

stamps. with a level of detail comparable to the oval Hal Tucker stamp

back of Geoffrey's picture.

And what about, you know, Geoffrey's is a flower picture?

I mean, is that the kind of thing that Fairchild did?

Yes.

This is a picture of the daughter, flat, and it was her boyfriend who was the

artist. And if you look carefully at the back there...

What do you see?

What is that?

I think that's a bottle with three flowers in the looks of it.

Yes. Which are not dissimilar to your picture, Geoffrey.

Now, this isn't evidence sufficient to convict somebody of producing a forgery,

but my conclusion is that the weight, I believe, is coming down

towards the fact that this must be one of the... Fatal forgeries.

Yes.

Sir Geoffrey, having heard all of this, how do you feel?

Well, it's not a good look.

Difficult, very difficult. I can see virtues in the painting.

I've absorbed all of this and I feel that I'm fighting in a negative corner.

Ultimately,

it's not up to him.

standing here, it's up to the world authority on Mondrian, Dr. Vitsakopis,

he will ultimately make the decision.

After Dick's dramatic allegations, the fate of Geoffrey's picture is hanging in

the balance.

We've invited eminent Mondrian expert Dr. Vitsakopis to examine the picture in

person for the first time, as well as to review all of the material we've

gathered.

Just a few days later, His verdict has arrived, and we're returning to

to share it with Geoffrey.

It feels like ages since we've been back here, doesn't it? And it all started so

positively.

Well, we know that in 1993, in a major auction house, it was fully catalogued

a work by Mondrian.

And the labels on the back should have been so reassuring.

It's also the sort of thing that Mondrian did. He was a flat painter as

We also couldn't find any reference to Geoffrey's picture in any of the

archives.

Added to it, we've got those scientific anomalies, titanium white,

phthalocyanine green, which means that the whole early provenance is invalid.

And then, of course, the bombshell of the fake later provenance. I mean, that

looks like active deception, a crime.

I might be going too far here, but could it...

be a sketch by Mondrian and someone else who's added the paint.

That could be a glimmer of hope.

It's the moment of truth. We're all about to discover if Geoffrey's little

flower picture has been accepted as a genuine Mondrian or not.

So, this is it, Geoffrey. I've got the letter here from Visa.

Dare I ask how you're feeling about all this?

Well, I believe in the painting, but I'm stoic at the moment.

Well, let's remind ourselves then, if it is by Mondrian, how much is it worth?

It could be worth £250 ,000.

And what if it's not?

Well, if it's not, it's just a very nice flower.

A couple of hundred pounds at best.

Ooh.

Tough.

Right, well, let's find out. Come on. Yeah.

It's a long letter. Oh, my goodness.

The early dismissal of the work by the valued and highly knowledgeable Mondrian

experts, Euston and Welsh, may only have been overturned if new research had

brought to light some indisputable verifications of, for example, the

provenance.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case.

Therefore, the RKD at this moment sees no reason to add the watercolour to the

Piet Mondrian catalogue raisonne.

Oh, Jerry.

C 'est la vie.

Oh.

Yeah, that's a shame. Yeah, it's a shame.

The letter lists a number of reasons for the decision, including many points

we've investigated.

Bovica also notes the English spelling of the word chrysanthemum on one of the

labels on the back, instead of the Dutch chrysanthe, as he would have expected.

More evidence of foul play?

I should tell you as well, actually, Geoffrey, that you remember the man that

Kellis, the police officer you met, suggested may have done this picture?

you know, of a forgery, we've had no response from him.

Well, that doesn't surprise me.

We asked Bonhams to comment on having handled Geoffrey's picture as a genuine

work, and they replied with this statement.

The painting was sold 30 years ago, and since that time, more information about

Mondrian and his work has come to light.

The arrival of the internet, availability of data, and access to

means that across the board, there have been advances in researching works of

art and their provenance.

So what are you going to do with this picture?

I'm going to eat my burger off of it. No, just kidding.

I'll hang it up. It's a memory of a great experience.

And I just look at it as one of the peculiar chapters in life.

What can you do, you know?

We come across fakes in the art business all the time, but I have to say...

how rare it is potentially to identify the faker themselves.

Of course, only the faker will know the truth and is unlikely to admit it.

And the trouble that they went to. I never liked saying this about fakers

because I don't admire them.

But as fakes go, that is accomplished.

If you think you have an undiscovered masterpiece or other precious object,

contact us at bbc .co .uk.

Fake or Fortune.

Earlier this year, we lost a much -loved friend and colleague, Nicky Illith.

Nicky was a brilliant TV director with a passion for art and was involved in

Fake or Fortune from the very beginning.

She will be so missed.

OK, stand by.

Keep smiling.

Action!