The Mail on Sunday had strange story about Frank Faryab who claims to have spent £2m restoring and authenticating an Turner paintings he discovered (‘But I insinctively knew its true quality, which was why I was prepared to invest so much on research proving my judgment.’ ).
The story doesn’t enumerate the expenditures leaving us only to imagine the expensive techniques used to make the case. The Mail relies on the opinion of three Turner experts who were flown—surely at great expense—to Geneva to inspect the painting:
Three Turner experts have been to Geneva, where the painting is kept, and all have reported either categorically or ‘almost certainly’ that the work is by Turner. One of them, James Hamilton, of Birmingham University, described the work as a ‘magnificent Turner’. He believes that the picture was kept in the artist’s studio until his death in 1851, and then sold on by John Pound, the son by a former marriage of the artist’s last mistress, Sophia Caroline Booth.
‘It just struck me as absolutely right,’ the academic said. ‘His brush strokes are all over the work. It is as if you can feel Turner coming out of the painting.’
Art dealer spends £2million proving obscure oil painting he bought ‘on a hunch’ is lost Turner masterpiece (Mail on Sunday)
