BBC's Fake or Fortune uncovers 'enormously important' painting worth £100,000
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- BBC's Fake or Fortune authenticated an 18th-century Katherine Read painting brought to the team wrapped in a sleeping bag, now valued at over £100,000.
- Mary-Louise Wedderburn, a retired accountant and Read's distant relative, inherited the portrait from her uncle's will two decades ago and long suspected it was by Read.
- Art historian Charles Greig called the work "one of the trickiest paintings I've ever had to consider" but said technical analysis from the Courtauld — comparing pigments, modelling and brushwork to Read's portrait of her niece Helena Beatson — made him "entirely certain" of the attribution.
- Greig identified the sitter as likely a member of the Nawabs of Arcot family in Madras (now Chennai), noting it was "extremely unusual" because most portraits of Indian women from that period depicted companions or wives of Europeans rather than royal-court members.
- Katherine Read studied in Europe, moved in elite circles and was paid more handsomely than contemporaries including Gainsborough, but was largely forgotten after fashions changed and some of her portraits were re-attributed to male artists.
- Presenter Philip Mould predicted more Read works would surface in India, while Fiona Bruce said Wedderburn hoped to place the painting in an exhibition "where the whole world can see this picture."
Why it matters: The authentication repositions a forgotten female artist who was paid more than Gainsborough in her lifetime and recovers what may be the earliest European-female-artist portrait of an Indian sitter — a work the show's experts argue belongs in a public gallery, potentially prompting re-evaluation of how many Read paintings still sit misattributed in private and institutional collections.
