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A small wooden cupboard, surmounted by a carved recumbent lion, was an unexpected find when the Roadshow visited Poole in 1998. Roy Butler, the militaria specialist on duty that day, knew exactly what it was. ‘It was a great day for me. I’d heard about Waterloo chests and seen photographs of three, but I’d never seen and handled a real one until the owner brought this one to me.’
The Battle of Waterloo in 1815 was an event of crucial importance. It saw the final defeat of Napoleon, ending twenty-three years of war between Britain and France, and also made possible the shaping of modern Europe. In a famously long and hard-fought battle, the French army was overcome by a coalition of British, Dutch, Belgian and Prussian armies under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The outcome was, as Wellington famously remarked, ‘a close run thing’.
Soon, the battlefield, and the buildings and other features on it, became a site of pilgrimage, attracting visitors from many countries. Booths were set up to sell souvenirs and relics from the conflict. A large elm tree, under which Wellington sheltered while his armies were readying for battle, was a particularly popular spot, and visitors flocked there to touch the tree and take away pieces of it. Soon, so much bark had been stripped off by souvenir hunters that the tree began to die. In 1818, an enterprising Englishman called John Children bought the tree from the Belgian farmer in whose field it was growing. From its timber, a throne was made for George IV as well as a number of chests and other, smaller souvenirs. Roy Butler explained that all the chests seemed to be similar, with two doors set with laurel wreaths and the lion on top representing the Lion Mound on the battlefield, above the word Waterloo.
The owner had acquired the chest from her father who had owned it for years and never liked it. Not realising its significance, he had been about to consign it to the coalshed when she had rescued it. It had been restored and she began to research its history. She discovered the connection with the Battle of Waterloo but, with no idea of the cupboard’s rarity and importance, was very surprised when Roy valued it for £25,000.
One of the challenges facing Roadshow experts is the need to be aware of changes in fashion, taste and patterns in collecting, and the resulting fluctuation in values caused by these changes. Values quoted ten, twenty or thirty years ago, while accurate at the time, may now be significantly different, and they can have gone up and down.
The area most affected by these changes is furniture, and there have been major drops in the values of most eighteenth and nineteenth century pieces. One of the most important examples of nineteenth century furniture to be seen on the Roadshow appeared at Wisley in 2003. This was a magnificent credenza, or dining room sideboard – one of the best pieces of Victorian furniture that John Bly had ever seen. He pointed out the lavish style and decoration, made from over twenty different types of wood, and with details in ivory, and said that such a piece was a triumph of the cabinet maker’s art and was either a special commission or was made for one the great international exhibitions.
The owner said it had been given to her as a wedding present about ten years before by a great aunt who had emigrated to South Africa, leaving the credenza in storage for twenty or thirty years. She said, ‘It just arrived on the doorstep well after our wedding, I had no idea what I was getting.’
John explained that the key thing about important furniture, particularly of the nineteenth century, was the identity of the designer or maker. He went on, ‘This was a period when design and craftsmanship were all-important, a time when traditional skills were being augmented by the intelligent use of machinery. There was also a demand among the newly wealthy industrialists and others for the best, and this is the best.’
The owner had been able to establish that the original owners were the Baird family from Kelso in Scotland, and their initials inlaid on the front of the credenza matched the initials on the still-surviving gateway to their former house. George Alexander Baird was a famous amateur jockey, race horse owner and breeder whose family wealth came from iron and coal, and he would have been the ideal owner for such an extravagant and opulent piece of furniture.
John’s valuation highlighted the importance of identifying the designer or maker. ‘If we can trace it to a maker, it’s worth in excess of £100,000. If we can’t, then I’m afraid it’s only worth £50,000.’ At this point the owner nearly fainted. Today, the valuation would be lower for this credenza, which while magnificent, is still anonymous, and so this is a classic reflection of changing tastes and fashions in the marketplace.
‘This painting by Souza hangs on the bedroom wall, so I have been sleeping beneath it for most of the past ten years. Certainly, if the place burns down, it was always going to be the thing I’d rescue first.’
One of the Roadshow’s more unusual London locations was the Dulwich College Picture Gallery, visited in 2008. Most of the filming was done in the garden, but several items were filmed inside the gallery, a sometimes daunting experience for specialists who found themselves in the shadow of a Rembrandt or a Gainsborough. Nevertheless, some interesting and unusual paintings appeared, not least one by the Indian artist, Francis Newton Souza, generally known as F. N. Souza.
Born in Goa in 1924, Souza was brought up as a Catholic and educated at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Later, he attended an art school there but was expelled for supporting Indian independence. In 1947, he joined the Communist party and, the same year, was one of six founder members of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, which introduced Indian artists to international, avant-garde movements, such as Cubism and Expressionism, while retaining an awareness of India’s own art history. It was set up a few months after the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, an event seen by the group’s members as an impetus to create a new and contemporary art style for a modern India still dominated by conservative and traditional ideas and styles. Their aim was to paint with a new sense of freedom relating to content and technique, while acknowledging universal laws concerning aesthetics and colour composition. The group had largely dispersed by 1956, but its influence lived on, helping to shape the nature of modern art in India and, more importantly, giving it an international standing.
AN EXPERIMENTAL ARTIST
In 1948 Souza held his first exhibition in London, moving to Britain the following year. Other exhibitions followed and, by 1955, his reputation was established. His style, according to the critic John Berger, was an eclectic mixture of Expressionism, Art Brut and British Neo-Romanticism, often overlaid with eroticism. An experimental painter throughout his long career, and an artist who pursued his own particular sense of beauty in the human body (which he saw as wild, noble, fragile and corruptible), Souza was one of the first Indian artists whose work was widely appreciated in Europe and the United States. In 1967 he moved to New York, receiving the Guggenheim International Award and staying there until he returned to his native India shortly before his death in 2002. His obituary in the Times of India stated: ‘With a few slashing lines and a raw, expressive energy, Francis Newton Souza stripped away all subterfuge… the seamy
