Fake or Fortune? painting uncovered Mystery of Sir Winston Churchill's paintings finally solved | By Dalya Alberge, The Telegraph

Art detectives on the BBC's Fake or Fortune? television series tried in vain in 2015 to prove that a painting of a sun-drenched village scene on the French Riviera was by Sir Winston Churchill. 

But experts on the wartime leader rejected the attribution, partly because there was not enough documentary evidence.

Now British artist Paul Rafferty has uncovered a "smoking gun", a thumbnail photograph of that very painting - the fountain of St-Paul-de-Vence - at Chartwell, Churchill's family home in Kent. 

[...]

The episode, presented by Philip Mould and Fiona Bruce, had established that the painting depicted St-Paul-de-Vence and unearthed evidence placing the great man at the scene. 

They believed in the attribution, along with Mr Rafferty, who detected Churchill's pencil-marks and palette of colours. Although the picture had been found in the 1960s, in the coal-shed of a London house once owned by Churchill's daughter, Sarah, Churchill experts still required further evidence. The programme ended with Mr Mould suggesting that evidence might one day emerge, adding: "You could say that Churchill lives to fight another day."

[...]

Mr Mould, whose new Fake of Fortune? series is in production, said: "In over 30 programmes, I used always to quote this - until now - as one of our most unsatisfactory endings. I simply could not understand why - it gave me sleepless nights given the overpowering circumstantial evidence we had garnered.

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