An English artist paid £2,090 for a painting listed only as ‘in the style of’ Helen McNicoll; experts later proved it was her long-lost Bean Harvest, valued at £300,000 and sold for £174,000
An English artist and part-time art dealer who bought a wrongly labelled oil painting for £2,090 at a regional UK auction made a life-changing discovery when experts confirmed that the painting was a long-lost Impressionist masterpiece. The artwork had originally been listed only as “in the style of” Canadian Impressionist Helen McNicoll and was later valued by specialists at £300,000. It was eventually sold at auction for £174,000 to Canadian collector Pierre Lassonde, bringing the painting back into public view after more than a century. David Taylor bought the painting at an auction where it was kept in a cheap plastic 1960s frame. It also had a brass-coloured plaque with the title Women of the Fields. The plaque misspelled the artist’s name as “McNicol” and said the painting was made in 1958, more than 40 years after McNicoll died in 1915. Despite these mistakes, Taylor noticed the high quality of the brushwork. According to a report by Artnet, he thought the farming scene looked as if it had been painted by “someone who really knows what they’re doing”.
Uncovering a hidden signature
After taking the painting home and removing the cheap plastic frame, Taylor found a signature in the bottom-left corner that appeared to match McNicoll’s handwriting. However, art records did not list a work called Women of the Fields among her known paintings. Unsure about the painting’s history, Taylor contacted the team behind the BBC television programme Fake or Fortune?, led by art dealer Philip Mould and broadcaster Fiona Bruce. The programme began a detailed scientific and historical investigation to find out whether the painting was genuine. Technical tests compared Taylor’s painting with a known McNicoll work, The Apple Gatherer, painted around 1911. Experts found that the same pigments had been applied in the same ways to the figures’ faces and the foliage in the background of both paintings. Laboratory tests also found Red Lake pigment made from natural organic materials. Under ultraviolet light, the pigment produced a pink glow in matching patterns on both paintings. This showed that the artist had used the same types of materials and pigments.
Tracking a lost century
Historical research for the programme revealed that McNicoll had painted a work called The Bean Harvest. It had been shown five times in Canada between 1912 and 1913 before disappearing from public records. Provenance research carried out during the BBC investigation showed that the painting had later entered the private collection of the Pine-Coffin family in Britain. Norman Pine-Coffin, a British painter, had exhibited at London’s Royal Academy around the same time as McNicoll. This suggested that the two artists may have known each other and helped explain how the painting moved from Canada to Britain. After the painting was authenticated, Mould estimated that The Bean Harvest could sell for £300,000 on the open market. During the Fake or Fortune? programme, Bruce praised the painting for its “light and movement” and called McNicoll “a pioneer”.
A return to Canadian soil
The authenticated painting was later offered at Sotheby’s in London, where Canadian philanthropist and art collector Pierre Lassonde bought it for £174,000. Lassonde, who had previously called the painting “magnificent”, loaned it to public institutions so that people could see it again for the first time in 110 years. According to a media release from the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada, the painting was placed on central display as part of the exhibition Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey. The exhibition was organized by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and adapted by the Art Gallery of Hamilton. In a statement released by the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Shelley Falconer, the institution’s President and Chief Executive Officer, spoke about the importance of bringing the painting back to Canada. “We are extremely honoured to feature The Bean Harvest as part of Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey,” Falconer said. “This exhibition is a truly inspiring tribute to one of Canada’s most important Impressionist painters, and we invite everyone to experience her remarkable work in person.”
Pioneer of light and form
Helen McNicoll was born in Toronto in 1879. She lost her hearing at the age of two after suffering from scarlet fever. In 1902, she moved to England to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and later built her career in Europe. She was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1913 and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1914. She died in 1915 at the age of 35 from complications linked to diabetes. The discovery has also been highlighted by the British Art Fair in its market assessments as an important example of valuable artwork being found after passing through regional auction houses without being properly identified.
