A painting bought for £2,090 at auction looked ordinary. Experts later identified it as a lost Helen McNicoll masterpiece valued at £300,000

Helen McNicoll painting: A painting bought for £2,090 at a regional auction house was revealed in October 2024 to be a long-lost work by Canadian artist Helen McNicoll.

The painting, The Bean Harvest, had been missing for more than 100 years. After an investigation on BBC’s Fake or Fortune?, presenters Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould pronounced the work to be genuine. Mould had said that, if the painting proved genuine, its owner could expect it to be worth £300,000.

David Taylor Spotted the Painting at an Auction

David Taylor, an artist and retired art dealer from Lincoln, spotted the painting while wandering around a regional auction house. He did not have a catalogue for the auction but noticed the harvest scene and thought it looked as though it had been painted by “someone who really knows what they’re doing,” according to Artnet. Taylor bought the painting for £2,090.


The artwork was in what Artnet described as a “plastic 1960s frame.” After removing it from the frame, Taylor discovered a signature in the bottom-left corner that appeared to be McNicoll’s.

The Auction Listing Did Not Identify McNicoll

Taylor had purchased the painting under the title Women in the Fields. The auction house had listed it online as being “in the style of Helen Galloway McNicoll.”

A plastic plaque on the front of the frame called the work Women of the Fields, misspelled McNicoll’s name as “McNicol” and dated the painting to around 1958. That date was impossible because McNicoll died in 1915.

Taylor initially contacted Canadian auction house Heffel, but was told that the work could not be located in McNicoll’s catalogue.

The Painting Was Identified as The Bean Harvest

The painting was eventually identified as The Bean Harvest.

The BBC reported that the work had been exhibited five times in Canada between 1912 and 1913 and that its whereabouts had subsequently been unknown.

Its provenance showed that the painting had passed through the Pine-Coffin family. Norman Pine-Coffin was an artist who had exhibited at London’s Royal Academy shortly before McNicoll. Artnet said this could suggest that the two artists had met, potentially explaining how the painting came into Pine-Coffin’s ownership.

The original frame and support had also been disposed of, and the painting had been downsized, potentially to fit a new frame, Artnet reported.

Experts Confirmed the Helen McNicoll Attribution

Taylor brought the painting to BBC’s Fake or Fortune?, where Bruce and Mould investigated whether it was genuinely by McNicoll.

As part of the investigation, experts compared The Bean Harvest with McNicoll’s The Apple Gatherer, dating to around 1911. The two works used the same canvas and the same red lake pigment, which appeared “hot pink” under ultraviolet inspection, according to Artnet.

On October 3, 2024, Bruce and Mould pointed out that the painting “the real deal,” as per Artnet.

The BBC also reported that an expert assessment presented during the programme found enough evidence to support the conclusion that the painting was a lost work by McNicoll.

At the beginning of the programme, Mould had said that if the work proved genuine, Taylor could expect it to be worth £300,000, or about $390,000. The £300,000 figure was therefore a potential value cited by Mould, not a confirmed sale price.

Who Was Helen McNicoll

Helen McNicoll was born in Toronto in 1879. She became profoundly deaf as a young child after contracting scarlet fever and learned to lipread, as per the Artnet report.

She studied at London’s Slade School of Fine Art and spent most of her life in London, while also living and painting in France.

McNicoll became known for landscapes and portraits of women and children. Her Impressionist style helped popularize the movement in Canada, and she exhibited more than 70 works in the UK and Canada during her lifetime.

She died in Dorset in 1915 at the age of 35 following complications from diabetes.

A Painting Missing for More Than a Century

The discovery attracted the attention of Canadian collector and philanthropist Pierre Lassonde. He described The Bean Harvest as “magnificent” and said he would not mind adding another McNicoll work to his collection.

Bruce praised the painting for its “light and movement” and called McNicoll “a pioneer,” according to Artnet.

At the time of Artnet’s October 23, 2024 report, The Bean Harvest was being held in a gallery ahead of its planned appearance at Sotheby’s London Modern British & Irish Evening Auction on November 14. Taylor was hopeful that the painting could achieve a record price.