Drawings That Turned Out to Be Hidden Masterpieces | Antiques Roadshow UK

So, you can do the mathematics yourself? Yes, of course. It is. Really? Well, it's a marvellous drawing. Oh, gosh, right. She's just gorgeous. Yes, thank you very much. Well, this is a splendid collection of Fougasse books and drawings, and it certainly brought a smile to my face this morning. Tell me, where did you get this original cartoon from? I understand from my father that it actually came from a RAF camp, and I always thought it was a print. I didn't realise it was an original. When did you find it was an original? I think because it was out of its frame when it came to us. That's it, that's it. I realised looking at the backing board. Yes, it's impossible to tell unless you actually get it out of a frame and look at it, but if you look down here and feel there, there's a little bit of scratching out where he's done a bit of work on it, but it's lovely. Now, Fougasse, do you know about Fougasse? Do you know...? I've always known, been aware of him. I mean, careless talks cost lives and all that sort of thing, and he has this very distinctive style. Fougasse was the pen name of somebody called Kenneth Byrd, and he was invalided out of the First World War in 1915, and he couldn't walk for five years, but in 1916 his first drawing was actually published by Punch, this very distinctive sort of art deco style almost. Fougasse, it comes from the French. It was a French word which means an underground bomb. A bomb was put in the ground and packed tightly with stones, and so when it blew it would give the maximum damage, and I suspect that's probably what happened to him during the war, and it also means actually a whim or a fancy or something like that, which is rather nice because, you know, these cartoons are his whims and fancies. It's a very well chosen name. Look at this one, this lovely one, the park keeper calling all out when all the railings have been taken for the war effort, and this one too, the war's humanising influence, the shelter trench. For the first hour nobody talks to each other, for the second they talk individually, and then the third hour they're all talking, and four hours following they're all fast asleep. It's just lovely. Now these books that you've got here, they're lovely, but they're not in very good condition, I have to say, so they're not going to be of any great commercial value, but this here, this does have a value, this original cartoon. Do you have any idea of its value? None whatsoever, no. Well, Fougasse is very collectible, and he's going up tremendously in price, and I think now if that came on the market you'd have to pay somewhere in the region of £800 for it. That's nice, very nice. Well, thank you for bringing it here. Thank you. This is a rather eerie and almost frightening cartoon by E. H. Shepard, obviously best known for Winnie the Pooh, but he was a great punch illustrator, and here he is, something called The Goblin Market. Christina Rossetti wrote a poem, and it was all about a little girl who goes into a goblin market and can't resist what they have there. Christina Rossetti was obviously in the circle of the pre-Raphaelites, and of course drugs and all that sort of thing was very much flowing in their laudanum-filled days and all that sort of business, and so this is sort of harping back to that particular story, and there are all these undesirable creatures here selling stuff on the black market. Now, I noticed from the note on the back that it is dated Punch, 1942. This is right in the middle of the war. This is when the black market was probably at its height. Nylons being sold here. This rather sad one of this hen actually selling not only eggs, but actually selling carcasses as well. The thing about E. H. Shepherd, he had been through the First World War, he'd lost an elder brother, and obviously he was very, well, not anti-war, but very anti-nonpatriotic people, and obviously he considered the black market a very unpatriotic thing, and so this is his sort of frightening caricature. He was such a nice man that this is why I find it unusual. Tell me, where did you get it from? I bought this and another one about 15 years ago in the Petersfield bookshop. I think this was about £35. The other one was about £20, and there was a small pencil sketch by E. H. Shepherd of Winnie the Pooh. Oh, why didn't you bring that in? Well, I didn't buy it. I ran out of funds. £50 was my limit. Yeah, so how much was it? How much was that? I think that was about £90. Something like that. But that would have been the investment, because you see the thing about E. H. Shepherd is that people want his well-known illustrations. As I say, he was a perfectly competent cartoonist, but his cartoons for Punch were nothing like as valuable as that. You should have bought that. I mean, we'd be talking about thousands now just for that. Well, this one is extremely fine, as you can see, and he seems to have done very little reworking on it at all. 1942, as I say, a very strong cartoon. E. H. Shepherd, but not Winnie the Pooh. No, no. Value today, I suppose, about £600 or £700. So quite a good investment. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wish you'd brought me along the other Pooh. I wish I had bought it as well. This is Pooh in a state of evolution, we might say. Embryonic Pooh. And because his nose is more pointed and his legs are thinner, and I got it from Shepherd's daughter, Mary. E. H. Shepherd, the great illustrator of A. A. Milne's stories. And she said that is Pooh evolving from the family Teddy, who was called Growler. Yes. So he's not quite the sort of the rotund, dumpy little Pooh that we all know and love from the books. Yes, eating too much dough. Because he's not quite there yet. And underneath, Tigger. Tigger, who is just sprung fully formed from the head of his creator, I think. You know, he just looks like Tigger looks to me, Tigger looks in the book. Yes, absolutely. I did slightly worry about the line of it because you see it's rather loosely done compared to what we're used to, particularly when you look at the finished drawings in the books. But it's quite possible that, and I've seen Shepherd drawings that are loose, that it's just a few thoughts going through his head, isn't it, on this sketchy piece of paper. And he's got this jar of honey as well. And you can see the Y of honey is not quite... I think the N is supposed to be the wrong way around, isn't it, with honey? Yes, they're not great on spelling. Not quite got there yet, no. Now, the astonishing thing about a drawing like this is just how very popular it can be. I don't know what it is, but particularly amongst Americans, it's like buying a piece of the charm of your own childhood back again. At least I assume that's what it must be because they do pay the most astonishing sums for such things. Do you know what it's worth at all or have any idea? No, I don't. But it's different from being an actual illustration to the story. I see that. I think so. Now, the finished pen and ink drawings for Winnie the Pooh, recently two of them separately achieved £60,000 plus premium. Now, it's difficult to know where to put exactly to place this drawing in the structure of prices, but I think given that it is a working drawing, it's got to have an interest of its own as well. You know, I think it's going to add to its interest. Well, really, I think that we've got to put £10,000 to £15,000 on this drawing. And given the level of interest in Pooh and E. H. Shepard generally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if two American collectors fought each other and drove it very much higher than that. This is my father or a caricature of my father. He was editor of the Dandy from its first day in 1937 until he retired in 1982. Wonderful. 45 years. Desperate Dan was modelled on my father. My father's instructions to the artist were to draw him bigger than life with a chin like mine, like a chest of drawers. And Dudley Watkins was the artist. How wonderful. Now, this isn't a Watkins, is it? No, no, no, no. This was drawn two years ago when I asked the artist to actually temporarily took over after Dudley Watkins died. And this is by Charlie Greig. He did this for me. How wonderful. As a memento. And these were also done for you, weren't they? Yes. Here we've got Christmas 1950 from Paddy Brennan with all the well-known characters there. Keyhole Kate, Corky the Cat, Desperate Dan, Hungry Horace and all the others. Yes, yes. And so this was a tradition, was it? For you to have these cards every Christmas? No, no, it started around about 1950 and it carried on for a number of years. Now, this is 1954. Were you a teenager at that point? Yes, yes. So this is modelled on your antics. Yes, yes. Listening to Frankie Lane. Although I was never so glamorous. Now, this one. Tell me about this one. This looks terribly politically incorrect. Christmas dinner and surgery. A nice bit of leg for matron. Now, what's this about? That's 1958. 58, yes. I started medical school in 1957. I think I started doing anatomy about that time, you see. And I see what you've got to drink is a decanter of group A blood. Wonderful. Now, of course, the connection with Dandy goes further than just yourself because the local firm in Dundee, DC Thompson, they were the publishers of Dandy and Beano and all sorts of other children's comics, weren't they? What was its circulation in its heyday? In 1950, there were quite a number of weeks that the circulation was over two million. Quite extraordinary. The artwork for Dandy comes up for sale very, very seldom because most of it, of course, is held in the archives of DC Thompson. So to have this very special group drawn by some of the best names in the cartoon world and also featuring some of the most important comic characters makes them financially quite interesting too. I would have thought that each card is going to be worth upwards from £150. So you can do the mathematics yourself. I mean, it is a seriously important collection and one which deserves to be looked after, which I'm sure you do. Very occasionally, let somebody else have a glimpse. When I saw this drawing that you brought in today, it was behind glass and I had to lean in and think, could this be an original drawing? And we had it taken out of the frame and removed the glass and we lifted the new mount that you had put on it to find the original mount inside and to see it's by Henry Ryland and she's called Jasmine and it is an original pencil drawing by him. How did you come to have this drawing? My brother was a print kind of book dealer and he bought it, I don't know where, I think possibly London, but he always kept it. He didn't sell it and then he died and it got passed on to me. Henry Ryland is considered to be one of the foremost artists of the neoclassical revival, which came after the Pre-Raphaelite period and Henry Ryland was a particularly fine artist in the medium of watercolour and considered to be one of the best exponents of that medium. But this is a pencil drawing and what strikes you when you look at it is the level of meticulous detail in the modelling and the drapery and the beautiful face which he has captured so softly and so sympathetically. But there's something else about her that I think is worth mentioning and that is that she might be dressed in classical drapery but she's also very much a woman of her time and at that time in the late 19th century, around the 1870s, 1880s, the aesthetic movement was very much in fashion and she looks very much like a contemporary woman wearing the looser, more romantic clothing, casting away the tight-fitting, restrictive corsets and she really feels like she could have been a model of that time and are there particular things about it that you love? Yes, I do. I think the quality of the drawing and particularly her hair, I just think it's so intricate and I love the background as well, the jasmine plant. Absolutely, I love it. It's so delicately observed. Do you have any idea what your brother paid for it when he bought it? It certainly was like a couple of hundred, a few hundred. A few hundred pounds? No more. No more? But I can't remember exactly. There was a drawing of a very similar model, it might have been the same model, that came up for auction only a few months ago and I would say that your drawing was equal, if not more, beautiful. I think if that example is anything to go by, this could easily fetch in the region of £30,000. Oh gosh, right. She's just gorgeous. Yes, thank you very much. I really enjoyed hearing about Jasmine and that it would have been a model probably and what she represented, so yes, a lot of money. Maybe I'll have a bit more, I don't know, respect. Yes, I have always loved looking at her, so I think she does deserve perhaps a more flamboyant frame, shall we say, so yeah. Well, the artist is Stanley Spencer, one of the most important artists in Britain this century. A strange, small, squeaky-voiced little man from Cookham in Berkshire on the Thames. This is made in the war, 1944. Tell me about the portrait. My father-in-law was a marine engineer. He was in Port Glasgow awaiting a convoy. The ship was in for repair for around two months and my mother-in-law was also with him and they were staying in a lodging house and Stanley Spencer was at the same lodging house. Did they become great friends? I mean, they were together for two months? Yes, they did actually. They got on very well with him and he told them all about his life in Cookham, all about his hometown and they were sitting one evening in this parlour and he said, sit down, Jack, and I'll draw you. Wonderful. So was that done in an evening? Yes. It's amazing because it's really beautiful and did you know your father-in-law? Unfortunately, no. No, I just knew him. And what does your husband think about this as a portrait of his father? Oh, he thinks it's wonderful, yes. It's very good, isn't it? It's very strong and it's not boring. No. I know from photographs I've seen of him, it is marvellous, yes. Stanley Spencer paintings, at last, are getting their due recognition and a great masterpiece could be over a million pounds today. Gosh. A painting. Yes, I know. A great masterpiece. This drawing is a beautiful drawing. At least we know who it's of. It's not commercially, because it's of a straightforward portrait of a man, but I would have thought in the region of six to eight, maybe 10,000 pounds. Really? Well, it's a marvellous drawing by, you know, he's a very important artist. That is a shock. I had no idea. None at all. So wandering around these beautiful lush green gardens here, I can't help thinking that the book you've brought along could have been set in this scenery. This is a wonderful edition of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and this edition is illustrated by Arthur Rackham and has rather a nice surprise just inside. This is what looks to my eye an original sketch by Arthur Rackham with this lovely inscription which reads to Nurse Morley from her obstinate, so it is alleged, but grateful patient, Arthur Rackham, Limpsfield, 1938. Who was Nurse Morley to you? She was my aunt. She was one of five sisters, the only one in the family that never married and devoted her life to nursing. And I believe that she nursed Arthur Rackham in his later years when he was ill. So when did the book come to you? My mother gave me the book about 20 years ago and I knew nothing of Arthur Rackham at the time. That's amazing. 1938 is the year before Arthur Rackham died. So he was a South London born illustrator who hit his stride really in the Edwardian period. He's most famous for these really characteristically kind of spiky and ghoulish and gothic but luxurious drawings. So you have Bottom the Weaver with the head of an ass and he's being pulled at and teased by these mischievous fairies and it really speaks to the sentiment of the inscription of the alleged obstinate patient. If we turn in here, we can see this puckish fairy sitting on the roots of a tree surrounded by toadstools and it's just marvellous. Beautiful colour printing, a gorgeous gift to receive. In terms of the valuation of the book, I can see it with an estimate of £1,000 to £1,500. Well, thank you so much for bringing it along. You must be very proud of yourself. Arthur Rackham, he was a generous guy and he would correspond with people and add little sketches to the end of his letters and often he would inscribe books with a sketch but the story of this one is, I think, really special.