A little repetitive in the intro, but the book redeems itself once it dives into the various anecdotes. The Rockwell story was especially riveting and worth the price of admission. Great audio book. ( )

6 Paintings (Various)
4 Stories that Actually Involved the Author
1 Painting Visible to the Public
1 Not Very Subtle Plug for Author's TV Show

1 Intrepid Researcher who seems Far More Useful than the Author

The Longer Version
I picked this up because I was fascinated by the title - an ART DETECTIVE searching for lost treasures, spotting fakes and frauds! Yeah, no. Philip Mould is an appraiser for Antiques Roadshow, but first and foremost he is an art dealer - his detecting is in scoping out the potential of a work so he can increase the return on his investment by removing later overpaint and restore paintings to their former glory (and a larger price tag). And I have no issues with that, but his examples of "detective" work don't (to me) seem very much to fit the advertised bill.

Most of these stories are about spotting something in an auction catalogue, buying it, restoring it and selling it on to a private collector where I, as the reader, will never be able to examine it in detail to test the author's assertions of its power, beauty and the excellence of their restoration work. Once I had worked out that many of the paintings he talks about are privately owned with often the only available pictures from Mr. Mould's own website, some of the draw dissipated.

The most interesting (and "detective"-like) of the stories is that of a previously unknown Winslow Homer, found by a fisherman next to a garbage dump. There Mould's team (because it does seem like the majority of "detective" work is not done by Mould but by his not-celebrated-enough researcher) deduced through a number of clues the probable previous owners and eventually the subjects of the painting - only for everything to bog down in a still-unresolved ownership dispute.

The concept is interesting and I enjoyed learning about artists, but got frustrated at not being able to view the pieces discussed in more detail. ( )

Philip Mould, Antiques Roadshow expert, gallery owner, and authority on British portraiture shares some stories about his experience in the business. They are entertaining recollections, accurately explaining methods to discover the origin and history of a painting. My favourite story involved the research into an unusual portrait of Elizabeth I. ( )

Mould, a well-known dealer featured on the original version of Antiques Roadshow, has written an easily accessible book for the layperson intrigued by attribution, which combines both art and science into a magical profession. Those interested in the how will be rewarded, as will those merely interested in stories of lost treasures come to light. ( )

Mr. Mould is a dealer is British art and Old Masters as well as being a featured art expert on BBC episodes of The Antiques Road Show. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on British portraiture. One would think this would lead to a stuffy textbook like approach to his writing. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the reader gets to know Mr. Mould through his book it becomes quite obvious that he truly enjoys what he does and writes about it with enthusiasm and quite often a sense of humor.

In this book he discusses topics ranging from outright art fraud through to the intricate steps taken to restore damaged pieces of priceless art. He focuses primarily on six individual items ranging from the discovery of a rare portrait of a young Queen Elizabeth I, a copied Rockwell that turns out to be an original and a Hogarth painting haphazardly stored amongst a hoarder’s trove.

Reading this book was like traveling the world as an observer into the world of discovering fine (and sometimes not so fine) works of art. Very enjoyable.
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