“The artist (or possible forger) had also worked into the gouache with inked pen, pastel, chalk and pencil, real London Group mixed media stuff!”
David Refern LG reports.
I don’t know about you but I’m a sucker for “Fake or Fortune?” hosted by Fiona Bruce and gallery owner Philip Mould. Hopeful punters submit images of art works in their possession which they hope Bruce and Mould can prove to be genuine masterpieces and cash in. One such punter, Robjn Cantus, an ‘art blogger’, bought two-paintings-for-one for £35 at an art auction. The first was by Vera Cunningham (1897-1955), elected to The London Group in 1927 and a prolific exhibitor with the Group until her death, and, following a tip off, that the second painting could be by Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947), elected to The London Group in the Second World War between 1940 and 43. Bruce and Mould were tasked with investigating the possible Hodgkins.
Frances Hodgkins was born in New Zealand but travelled to Europe to study art and became a well-known figure in British art circles. She showed with The London Group in 1927 and twice in 1929 and was a member of the 1930s 7&5 Society (seven painters, five sculptors) which also included Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ivon Hitchens, John Piper and Jessica Dismorr, all members of The London Group at some point in their careers.
However, back to “Fake or Fortune?”. Bruce established that in 1942 Hodgkins, in her seventies, escaped wartime London and went to stay in Dolaucothi, South Wales. There she sketched and painted towards an exhibition she planned for the Lefevre Gallery in 1943. All but one of the twenty works in the 1943 show appear in her catalogue raisonné, the unaccounted-for painting was titled “October Landscape”. Could this be Cantus’s £35 two-for-one? In a genuine revelatory moment on an expedition to Dolaucothi Bruce and Cantus discovered the entrance to an old gold mine which looked convincingly like the subject matter for “October Landscape”.
Cantus had bought the two-for-one paintings from an auction of Hertfordshire County Council’s ‘Pictures for Schools’ scheme which had loaned the work to Broxbourne School where it was titled “Garden Scene”. It seems that just after the war many County Councils had art advisers who advised on buying contemporary works for schools where young students could see ‘real art’ by ‘real artists’ and not reproductions. Could Hertfordshire CC have purchased “October Landscape” from Lefevre for its ‘Pictures for Schools’ scheme in 1943 but not have recorded the correct title?
Here Philip Mould joins the investigation visiting Nicholas Burnett, a paper expert, who thought the paper was of poor quality (remember there was a war on) and buff coloured. The granular gouache paint seemed hand ground; the emerald green pigment in particular was made from copper and arsenic, now, unsurprisingly, no longer available. But this was all scientific evidence for a correct date and proof of authenticity. The artist (or possible forger) had also worked into the gouache with inked pen, pastel, chalk and pencil, real London Group mixed media stuff! That clinched it for me! Mould then held talks (online) with conservators at Auckland Art Gallery which has the largest collection of Hodgkins’s paintings. Spoiler alert! Hodgkins expert Mary Kisler thought “emphatically” that it was a genuine work by Frances Hodgkins and now worth £50,000. Bingo! Cantus determined that he was going to hang it on his wall.
Below is an In Memoriam to Hodgkins printed as a foreword to The London Group exhibition catalogue of 1947 in which her flower painting “Wild Violets and Honesty” was exhibited, the title a fitting summation of her life.
David Redfern LG, 2025
“Fake or Fortune?”, BBC 1, Monday August 4th, 2025
