Antiques dealer bets house on quest for the truth

But academics now say an ornate wooden item found at a Yorkshire car boot sale is probably part of a mid-Victorian panel painting worth less than 100.

Undeterred, the man who found it wants another opinion – and he is selling a house to pay for the research.

Martin Roberts, from Leeds, believes only scientific tests will determine how old, and how valuable, the 11-inch by four-inch item really is. The studies are likely to cost between 3,000 and 5,000, which Mr Roberts intends to raise by selling one of his two houses.

The Yorkshire Post revealed last August how he acquired the object from a friend at a car boot sale in Otley, in exchange for a pine chest of drawers and six Victorian glass handles which he had bought for only 13.

At the time it was suggested the wood might have come from a tabernacle which the Knights Templar used to carry religious items.

Mr Roberts showed the item to auction house Christie's, where specialists later speculated it might be Syriac and painted at the time of the First Crusade, depicting St George the Tyrant-Slayer.

But this view was challenged by other experts who were asked to comment on photographs of the artefact, sent to them by Christie's.

One academic, who has written books about Ottoman antiques, told the auction house he believed the item came from a Balkans or northern Greek triptych produced in about 1850.

He dismissed claims it might be Syriac and suggested the horseman in the painting was not St George but St Demetrios, a Christian martyr who died in the 4th century AD.

"Bear in mind," he wrote, "that the Middle East abounds with travelling triptychs of this sort which pilgrims took with them when on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

"I would personally exclude the early date proposed for this panel...and would value it at well under 100."

A second expert, from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, told Christie's: "I would not like to suggest a date for the wood, but the painting on it does not appear to be pre-modern."

Despite the unpromising analysis, Mr Roberts refuses to be pessimistic, having already scooped a big windfall in 2007 when an item he bought for 50 was sold for 30,000.

He had found the four-inch Egyptian alabaster torso figure, which dates back to 1386BC, in a drawer full of silverware which be bought at a house clearance sale in Killinghall, near Harrogate.

A former professional golf player and keen guitarist, Mr Roberts only began selling antiques online seven years ago and he became hooked when a 1968 Kingfisher Blue vase he bought for 2.99 was sold for 249.

He believes the wooden item he picked up in Otley might yet emulate his previous successes.

He said: "The artwork is phenomenal, but, quite frankly, it's not going to sell until it's been fully researched. At the moment it is not fully understood. When we get to the stage where it is fully understood then, and only then, will it go to sale.

"I need some money to pay a few bills anyway, and selling the house would mean I could get the research absolutely right.

"The most frustrating part is that, after seven or eight months of wondering what this item is, we are back to square one."

Mr Roberts said that by selling the three-bedroom house in Leeds, he could pay for the wood to be carbon-tested. He also intends to pay for the pigment used in the artwork to be analysed, to determine when the wood was painted.

"If the carbon dating says the painting is from 1850 I will have to agree to eat my guitar."

MISSION LED ACROSS YORKSHIRE REGION

Martin Roberts's quest to learn more about his mysterious wooden item has taken him across Yorkshire.

He picked up the artefact in Otley and took it to a Doncaster-based antique dealer, who was unable to date it but agreed it was "very old".

Mr Roberts then went to Middleham, North Yorkshire, to investigate a theory that the item was brought there by monks or pilgrims, but the trip proved fruitless.

Similarly, traders in nearby Masham said they were unable to help when Mr Roberts asked them whether they had seen such an item before.

Viewers speculated it could be an encaustic painting dating back to the Middle Ages, but an expert told Christie's this was unlikely.

"I very much doubt it is encaustic," he wrote, "a technique which by and large had vanished by the 8th century...This looks to me to be painted in the standard icon painting technique of egg tempera."