AI Helps Identify a Long-Misread F.C.B. Cadell Painting Bought for Under $100
A thrift-store purchase in White Plains has turned into a notable rediscovery in Scottish art. A painting bought by Helene Plotkin about 60 years ago for less than $100 was identified as an original work by Scottish artist F.C.B. Cadell (1883–1937) after her son, Barry, turned to Google’s Gemini chatbot for help researching its origins.
The work had long carried a title on the back reading “Portrait of Miss Don Wauchope,” but the digital inquiry pointed in a different direction. Gemini flagged the orange accents, Art Deco sensibility, and broader visual language as consistent with Cadell, and it also suggested a connection to the Scottish Colorists, the influential group that included John Duncan Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter, and Samuel John Peploe.
Barry then contacted specialists at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh, where Nick Curnow and Alice Strang confirmed the attribution. They also determined that the sitter was not Bethia Hamilton Don Wauchope, as the title implied, but another of Cadell’s models, May Easter. Strang described the painting as a “magnificent bringing together” of Cadell’s most celebrated motifs, noting that his stylishly decorated home often served as subject matter in the 1920s.
The rediscovered canvas sold to a private buyer at auction on June 4 for 189,200 pounds with fees, a striking outcome for a work that had spent decades in domestic obscurity. The sale underscores how AI tools are beginning to intersect with connoisseurship, though the final judgment still rested with human specialists who could place the painting within Cadell’s career and the visual culture of the Scottish Colorists.
For collectors and museums alike, the story is a reminder that overlooked works can still surface in the most ordinary places — and that technology may now play a role in bringing them into view.
