Series 4

The team investigates three paintings—Lady with Dogs, Darby and Joan and Crowd Scene—that were bought by Cheshire businessman Gerald Ames during the 1970s and attributed to L. S. Lowry. With no straightforward documentary history, Fiona and Philip use pigment analysis, archival film and comparisons with accepted works to determine whether the pictures are genuine or the products of one of Britain’s most frequently forged artists.

Artist Nicky Philipps asks the team to examine Boats on the Seine at Argenteuil, an unsigned painting held at her family’s former home, Picton Castle. Conflicting catalogues disagree over whether it is an authentic Pierre-Auguste Renoir, sending the investigation through gallery records, provenance research and scientific analysis in search of evidence capable of resolving the dispute.

A monumental depiction of the Lamentation of Christ hangs largely overlooked in St John the Baptist Church in Tunstall, Lancashire. The team travels through Britain and Italy to identify its artist, reconstruct how it reached the church and determine whether the neglected painting is an important surviving work from the Venetian Renaissance.

Charles Henty asks Fiona and Philip to investigate two paintings discovered in a coal cellar: a winter landscape attributed to Alfred Munnings and a view of a French fountain believed to be by Winston Churchill. Provenance research, eyewitness testimony and specialist examination are used to decide whether either family picture can be accepted as the work of its celebrated supposed artist.