After being instructed of the work’s authenticity and the projected worth, Wedderburn stated: “It’s wonderful, it’s unbelievable. Thank you so much.
“It’s simply so essential to me that it is by Katherine Read, due to the household connection, but in addition due to who she was.”
She added: “The extra that we discover out about Katherine Read, the extra I believe she was only a fantastic girl, she was simply tremendous.”
Read, a well-known portraitist at the time, studied in Europe, moved professionally in elite circles and was so successful that she was paid more handsomely than her better-known contemporaries, including Gainsborough.
However, like many other female artists, she was largely forgotten, as fashions changed and some of her portraits were re-attributed to male artists.
The Fake or Fortune team authenticated the painting by trying to find other Read works to compare it to, trawling through family archives, speaking to experts and gathering letters and wills that brought fresh insight into Read’s life in India.
They pieced together the story of the people she may have painted in Chennai in India, known then as Madras, including the Nawabs of Arcot, the local Mughal rulers.
Explaining his analysis, Greig said: “The proof from the file that to me was the strongest was the technical evaluation achieved by the Courtauld.
“The similarity of the portrait of [her niece] Helena Beatson: the pigments, the modelling of the figures, the brushwork, were very conclusive.”
The work is regarded as the earliest recorded painting of an Indian sitter by a European feminine artist.
