‘Art can colour and enrich your confinement’
‘Fake or Fortune?’ star Philip Mould is streaming short films about his own collection. He talks to Lucy Davies
Presiding over the kitchen table at Duck End – Philip Mould’s 17th-century home in Oxfordshire – is a portrait of the Royalist commander William Cope, who lived in the house not long after it was built in the 1620s. The picture dates from about 30 years later, during England’s interregnum, when the country was “between reigns” and riven by political dispute. The art of that period is marked by Puritan restraint and so Cope’s portrait, though handsome, is a little severe.
It was painted by Robert Walker, whose portrait of Oliver Cromwell, then Lord Protector, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Indeed, Walker was pretty much chief artist to the Republican faction at the time, which makes his painting of Cope (who, having backed the wrong side, lost his fortune and had to sell Duck End) an intriguing exception.
“When we hung him here, it was like putting features on the masonry,” says Mould, whose wife, Catherine, found the picture in an antique shop in London, quite by chance. Cope, he adds, is “a portal through which one could see and feel the history of the house.”
It had to be Cope, then, to kick off Mould’s new enterprise, Art in Isolation, a series of six- or sevenminute, rough-and-ready films in which the noted art dealer presents some of the works in his personal collection. Created on an iphone, each involves a genteel meander around the sunlit interior of Duck End: a dreamy confection of lime-washed nooks, mullion windows and oak panelling.
“I’m fortunate enough to live in a very ancient house,” says Mould, comparing the faintly tumbledown, stone-built edifice near Chipping Norton to “a poem with many stanzas”.
It was spending more time here under lockdown that prompted Mould to consider “how beautifully the history of the house comes together with the art on its walls. And it struck me that each one of those pictures, which are part of a collection I’ve built up over 35 years, is entwined in some way into my life and history. I thought, why not combine all three?”
Art in Isolation is broadcast live four afternoons a week on Instagram, where it has been viewed, I am told, more than 70,000 times. A prerecorded version is also uploaded to Youtube, where a rapidly growing (40,000 at the time of writing) audience awaits eagerly.
Of course, Mould, whose Pall Mall gallery specialises in British art and Old Master paintings, has the advantage of being a seasoned broadcaster, with eight seasons of Fake or Fortune?, the BBC programme in which he and Fiona Bruce establish the authenticity of Old Master pictures, under his belt.
Now, fans of Fake or Fortune? have followed Mould to Youtube, where they mingle with a raft of newfound followers from all over the world. Comments on the video platform range from, “I could watch Mr Mould for hours!” to “Your enthusiasm is really coming across!”, though others remark on his resemblance to the actor David Niven or request that he shave properly (he duly does). Mould’s whippet, Cedric, is also attracting an increasing share of the attention.
Mould is aided and abetted in his new endeavour by his 24-year-old son, Oliver, who, as luck would have it, completed a filmmaking module while at university. “He rolls his eyes at my incapacities,” says Mould, before admitting that the camera work is “rather more aerobic” than he is used to. “All the zooming in and out. But you know what? Actually, it works.”
Thus far, he and Oliver have put together 10 programmes, and intend 20. Highlights include a portrait of Moll Davis, one of Charles II’S mistresses, in which Mould recounts the courtesan’s rivalry with Nell Gwyn, and an appreciation of the artist plantsman Cedric Morris, of whom Mould is particularly fond.
One episode has even unearthed the lost history of a huge 18th-century painting hanging in Mould’s barn.
The art dealer bought Gestingthorpe Choir at a sale in New York 30 years ago but believed it the work of an unknown American artist. After spotting the painting in one of Mould’s films, a local historian contacted him to tell him it matched the description of an artwork he had read about in a book and that it had last been seen in a farmhouse in 1903. Mould tells me that he has “enough art hanging at Duck End to carry on for a good couple of months”.
As would perhaps be expected, the
Art in Isolation films have prompted “a definite rustling” among his rival Mayfair dealers. Derek Johns, for instance, has begun posting mini tours of his home and garden, as have Simon Dickinson and his son, Milo, though theirs is in the vein of parody, and highly entertaining. “It is rather charming,” Mould admits, graciously.
Roy Precious, a Wiltshire-based dealer, tells me that Instagram and the like have increasingly become the perfect means for the art world to cut a little loose. “I tell my followers about the hotels we stay in during our trips searching for portraits,” he explains. “I occasionally post amusing things. The art world has a reputation for stuffiness and elitism. I like to think I demystify it a little.”
The popularity of these online initiatives “speaks to art’s almost salvationary quality”, says Mould, who has been “profoundly moved” by the number of people who have thanked him for helping them forget about the world for a few minutes.
“Talking about art while we are all isolated has reminded us of art’s true function. The way it can colour and enrich your confinement. The way it befriends you and stays with you. Art is having a new day.”
In making the Duck End films, then, Mould has experienced a reawakening – as has Duck End. “I’m rediscovering pieces that I’ve walked past without a second thought for decades,” he says. “I’ve become far more engaged with the art and with the house as a result. In turn, they, too, are becoming more animate.”
In between filming, Mould is keeping his spirits up by playing tennis and buying chickens. Apparently he’s had a devil of a job finding them, but six bantams are expected tout suite.
He has also, he says, been learning to cook, following a lifetime of what is best summarised as “culinary inexpertise”. It’s not going badly, either. From the sounds of it, William Cope has so far been privy to a soufflé, a “state of the art salad” (no further explanation given) and a mixed fruit sorbet. “I bedazzled everyone with that,” he says.
‘I’m finding pieces that I’ve walked past without a second thought for decades’