At the Manchester Art Gallery, Dr Bendor Grosvenor discovers a painting of a country gentleman from the 1770s which he believes has been misattributed to Nathaniel Dance. He feels sure it is in fact by the German painter Johann Zoffany, a favourite portraitist of the royal family under King George III. While the painting is restored, Bendor investigates the life of Zoffany - a chancer and adventurer who squandered his royal patronage through a series of predictable errors of judgement. \n\n\n\nTravelling to Florence to see the location of Zoffany's greatest painting, the Tribuna of the Uffizi Gallery, Bendor also visits Parma, where Zoffany painted an extraordinary self-portrait. The artist ended his career in India, where he made a fortune, and Bendor goes to look at Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match in Tate Britain with art historian Sona Datta. They unpack the undercurrent of sexual innuendo Zoffany had filled the picture with. \n\n\n\nEmma Dabiri investigates Manchester's support for the abolition of slavery through the history of the gallery's first purchase - a portrait of the black American actor Ira Aldridge. She discovers the story of the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857, the largest art exhibition ever held in Britain, and looks into the Manchester Gallery attacks by three suffragettes in 1913.
Source: BBC 4
Series 4: 3. Cardiff
Art detectives Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the National Museum Cardiff to investigate a badly overpainted Madonna, currently attributed to a follower of Botticell ...
06-05-2024
BBC 4
Series 4: 2. Birmingham
Could two anonymous landscape paintings, discovered at Birmingham Art Gallery, be by artists whose work profoundly influenced the development of European landscape painting in t ...
16-04-2024
BBC 4
Series 4: 1. Oxford
In the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Dr Bendor Grosvenor identifies a portrait of a fellow of Merton College from the 1750s, George Oakley Aldrich. It is not known who painted the ...
09-04-2024
BBC 4
Series 2: 4. Arbroath
Hospitalfield House in the fishing town of Arbroath on Scotland's east coast is a Victorian treasure trove. The couple who owned this great house back in the 19th century were o ...
12-02-2024
BBC 4
Series 5: 3. Glasgow
Britain’s premier art detectives, Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri, are on the hunt to find and restore one of the nation’s great lost masterpieces. Can a mysterious ...
23-01-2024
BBC 4
Series 5: 2. Tatton Park
Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the grand Georgian mansion of Tatton Park in Cheshire, where Bendor has spotted a mysterious portrait of a 16th-century physician in i ...
16-01-2024
BBC 4
Series 5: 3. Glasgow
Britain’s premier art detectives, Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri, are on the hunt to find and restore one of the nation’s great lost masterpieces. Can a mysterious ...
23-01-2024
BBC 4
Series 5: 2. Tatton Park
Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the grand Georgian mansion of Tatton Park in Cheshire, where Bendor has spotted a mysterious portrait of a 16th-century physician in i ...
16-01-2024
BBC 4
Series 4: 3. Cardiff
Art detectives Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to the National Museum Cardiff to investigate a badly overpainted Madonna, currently attributed to a follower of Botticell ...
06-05-2024
BBC 4
Series 4: 1. Oxford
In the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Dr Bendor Grosvenor identifies a portrait of a fellow of Merton College from the 1750s, George Oakley Aldrich. It is not known who painted the ...
09-04-2024
BBC 4
Series 2: 4. Arbroath
Hospitalfield House in the fishing town of Arbroath on Scotland's east coast is a Victorian treasure trove. The couple who owned this great house back in the 19th century were o ...
12-02-2024
BBC 4
Series 4: 2. Birmingham
Could two anonymous landscape paintings, discovered at Birmingham Art Gallery, be by artists whose work profoundly influenced the development of European landscape painting in t ...
16-04-2024
BBC 4