I scroll through the site endlessly, looking for things that have fallen through the cracks — the orphans of art history.
ART HISTORIAN BENDOR GROSVENOR, ON A GROWING OBSESSION AMONG AMATEUR SLEUTHS U.K. TO SOLVE MYSTERIES. ART
Unearthing an Old Master slumbering for centuries under a misattribution is usually the preserve — let’s be honest, the career dream — of an art expert. Two years ago, though, it was members of the public who helped prove that a 17th-century portrait thought to be “studio of Anthony van dyck,” was by the master himself.
The portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara eugenia had been hanging on the wall at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, england, when dealer Fergus Hall first voiced doubts about its authorship. He did so using Art detective, an online forum whose 42,000 members work together to unravel the mysteries and mis-cataloguing plaguing much of britain’s publicly owned art collection.
That might mean identifying a sitter whose name has gone amiss, or providing the breadcrumb that brings to light a lost masterpiece. The Van dyck case — solved by close attention to the Infanta’s head and hands — is only one of a number of such successes on their books.
Art detective was launched in 2014 by Art uk, a descendant of the Public Catalogue Foundation, which was set up in 2002 by diplomat-turned-art-enthusiast dr. Fred Hohler to record and photograph every publicly owned painting in britain, so that said public might know and cherish them.
Hohler’s Man Friday was Andrew ellis, a former banker who remains director of Art uk. Today, the site teems with 270,000 artworks by 50,000 artists over venues including hospitals and cinemas as well as civic galleries and museums.
All Art detectives provide their assistance pro bono. Many, like Kieran Owens, 64, do so on top of their day job — in his case, as a genealogist.
“There is an obsessive aspect to this,” he says.
Just how many “conundrums” — as the detectives refer to them — has he helped solve?
“I don’t think it’s quite thousands,” he replies. “Maybe high hundreds?”
Among recent successes are attributing a 1933 portrait of the Princess royal, Countess of Harewood, to royal Academician Simon elwes (image-recognition software matched the painting to an engraving) and an 1899 portrait of Lady Isabella Johnson to John Haynes Williams (from a detailed contemporaneous description of the painting in a derry journal).
ellis estimates that there are about 40,000 unattributed works in the public collection. Who knows what secrets they hold.
Art historian bendor Grosvenor, for one, is eager to find out. every painting he selects for investigation on the bbc’s britain’s Lost Masterpieces is harvested from Art uk, just as Art detectives have helped solve some of the show’s past cases.
“I scroll through the site endlessly,” says Grosvenor, “looking for things that have fallen through the cracks — the orphans of art history.”
Grosvenor is one of a number of experts recruited by Art detective to act as a “group leader” on the site: to help direct expertise and interest, discussions are corralled into themes and/or eras — Continental europe after 1800, Maritime, and so on. It is a leader’s role to monitor comments, pass on information and draw a discussion to its conclusion.
A typical case takes weeks to crack, though some threads have been running for years. Suggested updates or cases for solving come in to Art detective HQ at a rate of around 100 a week, manager dr. Marion richards says, though a good portion never reach the public forum. If a submission lands with enough substantiating evidence attached, it will be dealt with internally, though there is a serious backlog. When she joined in 2018, there were 5,000 inquiries in the queue. That number currently stands at about 3,700.
“It is cases that require a group effort to be solved that we put out to the detectives,” richards explains.
A quick scan on the site reveals the following requiring attention: “does anyone know which location inspired this Ivon Hitchens landscape?” and, “Who painted this burning building during a Zeppelin raid?”
As readers in the field will know, the first commandment of a detective story is that every clue to whodunit must be placed fairly before the reader. This is also true of a painting, in which the fingerprints of history might be found in the shape of a ruff, or sleeve, or some detail of heraldry.
Often, the key is less about knowing the signature strokes of a great master than the time-consuming rabbit-hole that is poring over old documents.
“This is where an amateur, in the best sense of the word, can really deliver,” says ellis.
“Art detective works because it brings together apparently random bits of expertise,” agrees Grosvenor.
In the case of an unidentified First World War officer, “I could have rung up every curator in early british 20th century art in the country and still not got the answer,” says Grosvenor. “In the end, someone matched the face to a newspaper article. It was quite amazing to watch it unfold.”