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“It’s great, it’s incredible. Thank you so much,” Wedderburn said after being told about the accuracy of the work and the proposed value.
“It’s so important to me that it’s Catherine Reed, because of the family connection, but also because of who she is.”
She added: “The more we read about Catherine, the more I think she was a wonderful woman, she is wonderful.
Read, a popular portraitist at the time, was educated in Europe, moved in elite circles throughout her career, and was so successful that she was paid more than her famous contemporaries, including Gainsborough.
However, like many other female artists, she was largely forgotten, as fashions changed and some of her portraits were given to male artists.
The Fake or Fortune team verified the painting by trying to find other works of art to compare with the painting, trawling through family archives, talking to experts, and collecting letters and testaments that provide new insights into the art of reading in India.
In Chennai, India, then known as Madras, they collected together the history of the people they treated, including the Nawabs of Arcot, the local Mughal rulers.
Explaining his analysis, Greg said: “The strongest piece of evidence from the docs for me was the technical analysis done by Courtauld.
“The likeness of the portrait of her niece, Helena Beatson: the colors, the model of the figures, the brushwork, was very conclusive.”
The work is believed to be the first painting of an Indian setter by a European woman artist.
