Fake or Fortune?

Aired 2016

The team investigates paintings and sculpture linked to Delaroche, Lucian Freud and Rodin, alongside difficult portrait attributions. Questions of family ownership, incomplete records and deliberate deception complicate the search for firm answers.

Aired 2017

Three concentrated investigations focus on works attributed to Constable, Australian Impressionist Tom Roberts and Gauguin. Each case explores how provenance, technique and changing expert opinion can transform the status and value of an overlooked artwork.

Aired 2018

The programme expands beyond conventional painting cases, examining works connected with Ben Nicholson, Toulouse-Lautrec, Henry Moore and Giacometti, as well as historically important portraits of Black British subjects. The series combines attribution with broader questions of identity and neglected art history.

Aired 2019

Paintings linked to Sir Thomas Lawrence, Giorgio de Chirico and Venetian view painters are investigated through family histories, labels and documentary evidence. The cases repeatedly show how plausible provenance can conceal misattribution or later invention.

Aired 2021

The team examines a supposed Henry Moore sculpture, a painting attributed to Gérôme, a lost Landseer and a small religious study linked to Benjamin West. The series moves between sculpture, academic painting and rediscovered works whose original identities have been obscured.

Aired 2022

Cases include a Ben Nicholson mural painted directly onto a house wall, a Modigliani drawing, a disputed Sisley and a Flemish religious painting. Conservation and the physical relationship between an artwork and its setting become unusually important.

Aired 2023

The investigations cover an Elisabeth Frink sculpture and works linked to artists including Pissarro, Cézanne and Arshile Gorky. Strong scientific and archival evidence repeatedly confronts the final authority of expert committees and estates.

Aired 2024

The team investigates a flower painting attributed to Mondrian, a rediscovered work by Canadian Impressionist Helen McNicoll, music-related memorabilia and a disputed Corot. The McNicoll case provides a particularly significant recovery of an overlooked artist’s work.

Aired 2025

A modestly priced painting possibly by Winston Churchill, two disputed Renoirs, a lost work by Frances Hodgkins and a damaged painting associated with Angelica Kauffmann form the core of the series. Several investigations begin with inexpensive or neglected objects that may have important origins.

Aired 2026