A WAR ARTIST’S LOVER

SOMETIMES it pays to have a second look, even on the Antiques Roadshow. For when this painting first turned up to be valued in Greenwich, it was assumed to be a copy of a painting by the World War i artist Sir William orpen.

But further research by the show’s experts revealed it was the real deal. in fact, at £250,000, it was then the most valuable painting ever on the show.

No one was more surprised than its owner, a man of modest means who had been left it by his uncle.

‘i’m completely gobsmacked,’ he said. ‘it’s worth more than my house!’

the picture is of Yvonne Aubicque, daughter of the mayor of Lille — she also happened to be Sir William’s comely young mistress — whom he somehow found time to paint while in France as an official war artist supposedly recording the horrors of the trenches.