Seven British paintings have been removed from gallery walls and replaced with fakes as part of a national television competition organised by Sky Arts. The deception has been carried out with the full cooperation of institutions including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and Manchester Art Gallery.
Throughout July, members of the public will be able to view the affected displays, knowing that one painting in each location is not what it seems. In Manchester, for example, pre-Raphaelite works by artists such as Ford Madox Brown, William Holman Hunt, Rossetti and Millais will be on show, with one of them a forgery.
Phil Edgar-Jones, director of Sky Arts, said: “You don’t have to be an art historian to have a go at this. All you need is a sense of curiosity and an eye for detail. We wanted to tell the story of British art with a sense of fun, and in a way that would encourage us all to take a closer and more critical look at the works of great British artists.”
The participating galleries are in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London and Manchester, and the seven displays will also be available to view online. Each episode of the forthcoming series will focus on a particular period of British art, from 18th- and 19th-century animal and sporting art to Stuart court portraiture.
Successful fake-spotters will be invited to the series finale at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where the eventual winner will receive a fake of their own. The programme, titled Fake! The Great Masterpiece Challenge, will be screened in the new year and presented by journalist Giles Coren and art historian Rose Balston.
