Baylham Mill home, which is currently up for sale<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n He said: \u201cIt was deeply traumatic for everyone.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I wasn’t on the front lines like my father, but it had a long-lasting impact.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Any family that has a threat of bankruptcy for nothing that they’ve done would be scared.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe felt vindicated by the result, because it\u2019s better to feel vindicated than bankrupted.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAnd now that we know there is no NDA, we can actually speak about this.”\n<\/p>\n
\n He now wants to know if, after all these years, Sotheby’s still refuses to accept the art work is a Poussin.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sotheby’s were contacted for comment on this, but did not provide a statement.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
Ernest Onians, also known as the Pudding King, was a unique and eccentric character. (Image: Newsquest)\n<\/p>\n
‘The mystery’<\/p>\n
\n Ernest Onians, known as the ‘Pudding King of East Anglia’, made his fortune in Suffolk selling his creation, the Tottenham Pudding – a pungent pig feed made from food waste in London.\n<\/p>\n
\n The industry had a massive surge in the post war era, making the scouse-born entrepreneur extremely wealthy in his new life in Suffolk.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, away from the muck and the mire, he had a second love, art; with paintings stacked up in his chicken shed and outhouse, and too many canvases to hang on the walls.\n<\/p>\n
\n Known by some as a ladies’ man, later in life he became more reclusive, and his family say “his paintings were like his children”.\n<\/p>\n
\n Looking back, Charles says, “the whole saga with the Poussin was just a big mystery”.\n<\/p>\n
\n He does not think his great uncle knew the painting was a Poussin, but he can’t be sure about anything.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
Balyham Mill near Great Blakenham has been put on the market. (Image: Jackson Stops)\n<\/p>\n
\n It had disappeared from public view sometime in the eighteenth century, and no one knows how it turned up in Suffolk.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 1999, Sir Denis Mahon, the great art expert, was somehow able to spot it looking through catalogues during the time of Onians auction, when he spotted the picture on a piece of paper “no larger than a postage stamp”.\n<\/p>\n
\n After it was extensively cleaned and restored, an expert at the Louvre, Pierre Rosenburg, confirmed that it was indeed the Poussin once owned by Cardinal Richelieu.\n<\/p>\n
\n Painted by Poussin in Rome in 1625-1626, it had been commissioned by the Pope\u2019s nephew Cardinal Barberini as a gift for Cardinal Richelieu.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![\"The]()
Inside Bayhlam Mill, where Ernest Onians worked and lived. (Image: Jackson Stops)\n<\/p>\n
‘A balls up’<\/p>\n
\n When contacted by this paper, Sotheby’s did not comment on whether they now consider the artwork to be the prized missing Poussin.\n<\/p>\n
\n They noted how the case was almost 25 years old, and the case was resolved through an out-of-court settlement.\n<\/p>\n
\n Charles Onians added: “It\u2019s not surprising they don\u2019t want to comment on a matter that was for them a real balls up.\n<\/p>\n
\n “How many opinions from how many people do you need for the painting to be attributed to someone famous?\n<\/p>\n
\n “How many experts are needed so that it goes from being worth \u00a3100,000 pounds to several million pounds?\n<\/p>\n
\n “This is the problem. If they put more effort in, just a little bit more effort, then they could have identified this painting as being a Poussin at the time.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI don’t think they’ve ever had any expert who said on the record that it is a copy, like they say.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201c These guys are experts at stone walling and just not, you know, not communicating.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cTheir reputation is everything.\n<\/p>\n
\n “They were very aggressive towards us at the time, employing the most expensive lawyers in London, knowing that we would be afraid of having to pick up their multi-million-pound tab.”\n<\/p>\n
\n “Of course, it\u2019s a matter of opinion, but these are the opinions that count.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2002, the Onians estate received around \u00a31 million in settlement fees, after a three year dispute with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-535733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}