Fake or Fortune art expert confronted with £2m Constable masterpiece he sold for just £35,000

Every week, Philip Mould breaks the hearts of fellow art dealers as he reveals the disguised masterpieces they let slip through their fingers on the BBC’s Fake or Fortune?

But on Sunday night it was the presenter himself who was forced to face up to what might be described as a £2 million mistake when the art detective show discovered an authentic Constable he had previously sold for just £35,000.

For 17 years, a depiction of Willy Lott’s Cottage on the River Stour has hung - with dubious provenance - on the wall of Gloucestershire businessman Henry Reid.

Philip Mould, art dealer

Now, using groundbreaking technology and an investigation that ranged from Los Angeles, Perthshire to London’s Savoy Hotel, the work has been confirmed as a prototype of the iconic Hay Wain, which depicts the same scene.

Constable scholars have described the discovery as “very important indeed”.

Yet when Mould, then a fledgling dealer, owned the painting on two separate occasions in the 1990s, he could find no one prepared to authenticate it.

Experts are acutely cautious of potential Constables, as the artist was the most prolifically forged of the 19th Century.

Analysis of the work in question revealed a crude painting-over of the original bucolic Suffolk scene - later removed - which may have deterred the scholars Mould consulted in the 90s.

However, new forensic techniques and two corroborating sketches of the same river-side cottage have now convinced experts to allow the painting into the official Constable cannon.

Alongside co-presenter Fiona Bruce, Mould traced the commercial provenance of the painting back to Constable’s son, via a socialite who lived in the Savoy and a Scottish whisky baron, which further helped Mr Reid’s claim.

The work is now estimated to be worth at least £2 million.

Despite missing out on the colossal sum, Mould was magnanimous.

“Despite my best efforts, I failed to prove it, so I was obliged to sell it on,” he said.

“I had a conviction, a dream, that it was possibly right, but art dealers can’t afford to put money into a picture and hope and wait.

“I’m really happy to know that I was not deluded.

“I’m thrilled for Henry, its owner.”

Mr Reid, who bought the painting from Mould in 2000, pledged to make it publically available.

He said he purchased the work on the basis that it might be a Constable, adding: “It was a bet worth taking.”

“I’m thrilled; I always loved the painting. But I had the uncertainty as well.”

The painting is believed to have been composed around 1820, just before the Hay Wain, which was finished in 1821.