Posted on 12/30/2013 1:01:16 AM PST by deks
It was bought for £400 by Father MacLeod – mainly because he liked its golden frame. It hung in the hallway of a retreat he runs for the clergy in Derbyshire. At at one stage, the painting fell off its hook on the wall and landed on a CD player, smashing the device.
After art expert Philip Mould inspected it, it underwent a thorough restoration and was officially verified as a genuine Van Dyck by Dr Christopher Brown, who is a world authority on the artist.
The artwork will now be sold by Fr. MacLeod to pay for the restoration of bells at the chapel within the grounds of the retreat he runs.
He said: ‘It’s wonderful that new church bells hopefully will be pealing out to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War in 2018.’
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The pictures and a nice video with the details at the link. . .
Full Title:
Fiona Bruce's £400,000 hunch: Antiques Roadshow star spots that £400 painting is really a Van Dyck worth a thousand times as much
Marvelous! I would have bought it too, just because it is so well done — even under layers of dirt.
This happened at a local antique store here on Capitol Hill a few years back. Someone bought an old painting back in the dusty aisles for a few hundred dollars. It turned out to be by a collected artist and worth, IIRC, about $35,000.
The first clue was Van Dyck’s name displayed on the frame!
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