FREDA BEDI CONT'D (#4)

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Part 1 of 2

Tom Keating
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/28/22



Thomas[1] Patrick Keating[2] (1 March 1917 – 12 February 1984) was an English art restorer and famous art forger who claimed to have faked more than 2,000 paintings by over 100 different artists.[3] The total estimated of the profits of his forgeries amount to more than 10 million dollars in today's value.[4]

Early life

Keating was born in Lewisham, London, into a poor family. His father worked as a house painter, and barely made enough to feed the household. At the age of fourteen, Keating was turned away from St. Dunstan’s College in London.[5] Because his father barely made ends meet, Keating started working at a young age. He worked as a delivery boy, a lather boy, a lift boy and a bell boy before he started working for the family business as a house painter.[5] He was then enlisted as a boiler-stoker in World War II. After World War II, he was admitted into the art programme at Goldsmiths College, University of London. However, he did not receive a diploma, as he dropped out after only two years. In his college classes, his painting technique was praised, while his originality was regarded as insufficient.[5] During Keating's two years at Goldsmiths College, he worked side jobs for art restorers. He even worked for the revered Hahn Brothers in Mayfair. Utilizing the skills he learned through these jobs, he began to restore paintings for a living (although he also had to keep working as a house-painter to make ends meet). He exhibited his own paintings, but failed to break into the art market. In order to prove himself as good as his heroes, Keating began painting in the style of them, especially Samuel Palmer.

Homage to Samuel Palmer, by Tom Keating


Samuel Palmer, by Tom Keating


Moonlit Dedham, Suffolk, by Tom Keating


Sussex Landscape, by Tom Keating

In 1963, he met Jane Kelly who would become his lover and partner in spreading and selling his forgeries. However, they separated many years before they were put on trial for the forgeries.

He later married his wife, Hellen, from whom he also separated in his later years. They had a son named Douglas.

Keating studied at London’s National Gallery and the Tate.

Mid-life

After dropping out of college, Keating was picked up by an art restorer named Fred Roberts. Roberts cared less about the ethics of art restoration than other restorers Keating had previously worked for. One of Keating's first jobs was to paint children around a maypole on a 19th-century painting by Thomas Sidney Cooper that had a large hole in it. Most art restorers would have simply filled in the cracks to preserve the authenticity of the painting.[5] His career of forgery stemmed from Roberts' workshop when Keating criticized a painting done by Frank Moss Bennett. Roberts challenged him to recreate one of Bennett's paintings. At first Keating produced replicas of Bennett paintings, but he felt he could do even more. Keating recalls feeling as if he knew so much about Bennett that he could start creating his own works and pass them off as Bennett's.[5] Keating created his own Bennett-like piece, and was so proud of it, that he signed it with his own name. When Roberts saw it, without consulting Keating, he changed the signature to F. M. [Frank Moss] Bennett and consigned it to the West End gallery. Keating did not find out until later, but said nothing.

x

According to Keating's account, Jane Kelly was instrumental in circulating his forgeries in the art market. With Palmer being one of his biggest inspirations, he created nearly twenty fake Palmers. Keating and Kelly then decided on the best three forgeries and Kelly took them to gallery specialists for auction.

In 1962, Keating counterfeited Edgar Degas' self-portrait.[5]

Self-Portrait, by "Degas", by Tom Keating


Degas Dancing Class, by Tom Keating

In 1963, he started his own informal school, teaching teenagers painting techniques in exchange for tobacco or second-hand art books.[6] This is where Keating, at the age of 46, met Jane Kelly, at the age of 16, a student of his. Kelly really enjoyed Keating's "class" and convinced her parents to pay Keating a pound/day for full-time instruction.[6] She became especially attached to him and they ultimately became lovers and business partners. Four years later, the two began a life together in Cornwall, where they started an art restoration business.[6]

Forger with a cause

Keating perceived the gallery system to be rotten – dominated, he said, by American "avant-garde fashion, with critics and dealers often conniving to line their own pockets at the expense both of naïve collectors and [of] impoverished artists". Keating retaliated by creating forgeries to fool the experts, hoping to destabilize the system. Keating considered himself a socialist and used that mentality to rationalize his actions.[5]

Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions they claim maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessarily limited to, the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies or other forms of free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, usually placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, it is usually described alongside communalism and libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing (libertarian socialism) of the socialist movement.

-- Anarchism, by Wikipedia

He planted "time-bombs" in his products. He left clues of the paintings' true nature for fellow art restorers or conservators to find. For example, he might write text onto the canvas with lead white before he began the painting, knowing that x-rays would later reveal the text. He deliberately added flaws or anachronisms, or used materials peculiar to the 20th century. Modern copyists of old masters use similar practices to guard against accusations of fraud.

In Keating's book The Fake's Progress, discussing the famous artists he forged, he stated that "it seemed disgraceful to me how many of them died in poverty". He reasoned that the poverty he had shared with these artists qualified him for the job.[5] He added: "I flooded the market with the 'work' of Palmer and many others, not for gain, but simply as a protest against the merchants who make capital out of those I am proud to call my brother artists, both living and dead."[6]

Samuel Palmer paintings



In the early 1970s, 13 paintings by 19th-century English artist Samuel Palmer – the man behind works such as In A Shoreham Garden (pictured) – were put up for auction by art restorer Tom Keating. Palmer, who died in 1881, was particularly hailed for works during what became known as his "Shoreham Period" during which the artist produced landscapes of the Kent village in which he lived between 1826 and 1835.

In 1976, The Times journalist Geraldine Norman exposed the Palmer paintings to be fake and Keating (pictured) confessed to having "flooded the market" with versions of works by the Victorian artist and others such as Constable. Keating said he did so as a protest "against the merchants who make capital out of those I am proud to call my brother artists". He was put on trial in 1977 but charges against him were dropped after he was injured in a near-fatal motorcycle crash. He died in 1984.



-- Fake treasure finds that fooled the world, by lovemoney.com

Technique

Mastering an artist's style and technique, as well as getting to know the artist very well, was a priority for Keating.

Keating's preferred approach in oil painting was a Venetian technique inspired by Titian's practice, although modified and fine-tuned along Dutch lines. The resultant paintings, while time-consuming to execute, have a richness and subtlety of colour and optical effect, and a variety of texture and depth of atmosphere unattainable in any other way. Unsurprisingly, his favourite artist was Rembrandt.

For a "Rembrandt", Keating might make pigments by boiling nuts for 10 hours and filtering the result through silk; such colouring would eventually fade, while genuine earth pigments would not. As a restorer he knew about the chemistry of cleaning-fluids; so, a layer of glycerine under the paint layer ensured that when any of his forged paintings needed to be cleaned (as all oil paintings need to be, eventually), the glycerin would dissolve, the paint layer would disintegrate, and the painting – now a ruin – would stand revealed as a fake.

Occasionally, as a restorer, he would come across frames with Christie's catalogue numbers still on them. To help in establishing false provenances for his forgeries, he would call the auction house to ask whose paintings they had contained – and would then paint the pictures according to the same artist's style.[7]

Keating also produced a number of watercolours in the style of Samuel Palmer. To create a Palmer watercolor, Keating would mix the watercolor paints with glutinous tree gum, and cover the paintings with thick coats of varnish in order to get the right consistency and texture.[6] And oil paintings by various European masters, including François Boucher, Edgar Degas, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Gainsborough, Amedeo Modigliani, Rembrandt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Kees van Dongen.

Kees Van Dongen, by Tom Keating

Keating's "Sexton Blakes"

Sexton blake is a term coined in the UK from the name of a fictional detective, comparable to Sherlock Holmes. In rhyming slang, the term means "fake". As usual, for a short time after its creation, a slang term has limited currency as it is known only to a few people, typically those in the criminal underworld. So Keating initially referred to all of his forgeries as Sextons.[1]

Revealing the forger


River landscape in the Porczyński Gallery in Warsaw, signed as Alfred Sisley, is claimed to be Keating's forgery

In 1970, auctioneers noticed that there were thirteen Samuel Palmer watercolour paintings for sale – all of them depicting the same theme, the village of Shoreham, Kent.

Geraldine Norman, the The Times of London's salesroom correspondent, looked into the 13 Palmer watercolors, sending them to be scientifically tested by a renowned specialist, Geoffrey Grigson. After careful inspection, she published an article in summer 1976 declaring these "Palmers" to be fake.[8] Norman was sent tips as to who forged these paintings, but it was not until Jane Kelly's brother met up with Norman and told her all about Keating, that she found out the truth. Soon after, she drove out to the house that Kelly's brother had told her about, and met Keating. Keating welcomed her inside and told her all about his life as a restorer and artist, not discussing his life as a forger. He also spent much of the time ranting about his fight against the art establishment as a working-class socialist.[6] A little over a week after their meeting (and a month after the first article), The Times published a further article written by Norman, writing about Keating's life and the many allegations of forgery against him.[8] In response, Keating wrote: "I do not deny these allegations. In fact, I openly confess to having done them." He also declared that money was not his incentive.[6] Though Norman was the one to expose him, Keating did not feel resentment towards her. Instead he said that she was sympathetic, respectful of his radical politics, and appreciative of him as an artist.[6]

When an article published in The Times discussed the auctioneer's suspicions about their provenance, Keating confessed that they were his. He also estimated that more than 2,000 of his forgeries were in circulation. He had created them, he declared, as a protest against those art traders who get rich at the artist's expense. He also refused to list the forgeries.

The trial

After Keating and Jane Kelly were finally arrested in 1979, and both accused of conspiracy to defraud and obtaining payments through deception amounting to £21,416,[6] Kelly pleaded guilty, promising to testify against Keating. Conversely, Keating pleaded innocent, on the basis that he was never intending to defraud, rather he was simply working under the masters' guidance and in their spirit.

Dionysius, or Pseudo-Dionysius, as he has come to be known in the contemporary world, was a Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in the late fifth or early sixth century CE and who transposed in a thoroughly original way the whole of Pagan Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Proclus, but especially that of Proclus and the Platonic Academy in Athens, into a distinctively new Christian context.

Though Pseudo-Dionysius lived in the late fifth and early sixth century C.E., his works were written as if they were composed by St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who was a member of the Athenian judicial council (known as ‘the Areopagus’) in the 1st century C.E. and who was converted by St. Paul. Thus, these works might be regarded as a successful ‘forgery’, providing Pseudo-Dionysius with impeccable Christian credentials that conveniently antedated Plotinus by close to two hundred years. So successful was this stratagem that Dionysius acquired almost apostolic authority, giving his writings enormous influence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, though his views on the Trinity and Christ (e.g., his emphasis upon the single theandric activity of Christ (see Letter 4) as opposed to the later orthodox view of two activities) were not always accepted as orthodox since they required repeated defenses, for example, by John of Scythopolis and by Maximus Confessor. Dionysius’ fictitious identity, doubted already in the sixth century by Hypatius of Ephesus and later by Nicholas of Cusa, was first seriously called into question by Lorenzo Valla in 1457 and John Grocyn in 1501, a critical viewpoint later accepted and publicized by Erasmus from 1504 onward. But it has only become generally accepted in modern times that instead of being the disciple of St. Paul, Dionysius must have lived in the time of Proclus, most probably being a pupil of Proclus, perhaps of Syrian origin, who knew enough of Platonism and the Christian tradition to transform them both. Since Proclus died in 485 CE, and since the first clear citation of Dionysius’ works is by Severus of Antioch between 518 and 528, then we can place Dionysius’ authorship between 485 and 518–28 CE. These dates are confirmed by what we find in the Dionysian corpus: a knowledge of Athenian Neoplatonism of the time, an appeal to doctrinal formulas and parts of the Christian liturgy (e.g., the Creed) current in the late fifth century, and an adaptation of late fifth-century Neoplatonic religious rites, particularly theurgy, as we shall see below.

It must also be recognized that “forgery” is a modern notion. Like Plotinus and the Cappadocians before him, Dionysius does not claim to be an innovator, but rather a communicator of a tradition. Adopting the persona of an ancient figure was a long established rhetorical device (known as declamatio), and others in Dionysius’ circle also adopted pseudonymous names from the New Testament. Dionysius’ works, therefore, are much less a forgery in the modern sense than an acknowledgement of reception and transmission, namely, a kind of coded recognition that the resonances of any sacred undertaking are intertextual, bringing the diachronic structures of time and space together in a synchronic way, and that this theological teaching, at least, is dialectically received from another. Dionysius represents his own teaching as coming from a certain Hierotheus and as being addressed to a certain Timotheus. He seems to conceive of himself, therefore, as an in-between figure, very like a Dionysius the Areopagite, in fact. Finally, if Iamblichus and Proclus can point to a primordial, pre-Platonic wisdom, namely, that of Pythagoras, and if Plotinus himself can claim not to be an originator of a tradition (after all, the term Neoplatonism is just a convenient modern tag), then why cannot Dionysius point to a distinctly Christian theological and philosophical resonance in an earlier pre-Plotinian wisdom that instantaneously bridged the gap between Judaeo-Christianity (St. Paul) and Athenian paganism (the Areopagite)? [For a different view of Dionysius as crypto-pagan, see Lankila, 2011, 14–40.]

-- Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, by Kevin Corrigan L. Michael Harrington, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published Mon Sep 6, 2004; substantive revision Tue Apr 30, 2019, Copyright © 2019 by Kevin Corrigan and L. Michael Harrington

The charges were eventually dropped due to his poor health after he was severely injured in a motorcycle accident. He then contracted bronchitis in the hospital, which was exacerbated by a heart ailment and pulmonary disease, leading the doctors to believe that he was not going to survive. The prosecutor dropped the case, declaring nolle prosequi.[6] Since Kelly had already pleaded guilty, she still had to serve her time in prison. However, Keating served no time, and shortly after the charges were dropped, Keating's health improved. Soon after, Keating was asked to star in a television show about the techniques needed to paint like the masters.

Aftermath

The same year Keating was arrested (1977), he published his autobiography with Geraldine and Frank Norman. A 2005 article in The Guardian stated that after the trial was halted, "the public warmed to him, believing him a charming old rogue."[3] Years of chain smoking and the effects of breathing in the fumes of chemicals used in art restoring, such as ammonia, turpentine and methyl alcohol, together with the stress induced by the court case, had taken their toll. Through 1982 and 1983 Keating rallied, however, and although in fragile health, he presented television programmes on the techniques of old masters for Channel 4 in the UK.[3][9]

A year before he died in Colchester at the age of 66, Keating stated in a television interview, that, in his opinion, he was not an especially good painter. His proponents would disagree. Keating is buried in the churchyard of the parish church of St Mary the Virgin at Dedham (a scene painted numerous times by Sir Alfred Munnings), and his last painting, The Angel of Dedham, is to be found in the Muniment Library of the church.[7][10][11]


The grave of Tom Keating in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin, Dedham, Essex.

Even when he was alive, many art collectors and celebrities, such as the ex-heavyweight boxer Henry Cooper, had begun to collect Keating's work. After his death, his paintings became increasingly valuable collectibles. In the year of his death, Christie's auctioned 204 of his works. The amount raised from the auction was not announced, but it is said to have been considerable. Even his known forgeries, described in catalogues as "after" Gainsborough or Cézanne, attain high prices. Nowadays, Keatings sell for tens of thousands of pounds.

And perhaps even more interesting, there are fake Keatings. The 2005 Guardian article states, "Dodgy paintings in Keating's original style, proudly bearing what-looks-like his signature, are finding their way into the market. If they manage to fool, they can claim £5,000 to £10,000. But if uncovered they are virtually worthless, much like Keating's 20 years ago. If you can pick them up for next to nothing, they may be a better investment than an original Keating counterfeit."[3]

Tom Keating on Painters (television show)

After Keating's legal suit was dropped, he was asked to star in a television show called Tom Keating on Painters. The show started airing in 1982 at 6:30 p.m. on weekdays to attract a family audience. On this show, Keating demonstrated how to paint like the masters, illustrating the techniques and processes of painting like artists, such as Titian, Rembrandt, Claude Monet, and John Constable.[5][12]

In popular culture

In the 2002 film The Good Thief Nick Nolte's character claims to own a painting Picasso did for him after losing a bet, when it is exposed as a fake he claims it was painted for him by Keating after meeting in a betting shop.

The fourth track, titled "Judas Unrepentant", on progressive rock band Big Big Train's 2012 album English Electric (Part One) is based on the life of Keating as an artist. According to the blog of Big Big Train vocalist David Longdon, the song walks through Keating's artistic life from his time as a restorer to his death and posthumous fame.[13]

Further reading

• Tom Keating, Geraldine Norman and Frank Norman, The Fake's Progress: The Tom Keating Story, London: Hutchinson and Co., 1977.
• Associated Press obituary for Tom Keating
• Keats, Jonathon, Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age, New York: Oxford University Press., 2013. (Excerpt on Tom Keating published by Forbes, 13 December 2012).
• Paci, P., "A Forger's Career, Tom Keating – UK," in Masters of the Swindle: True Stories of Con Men, Cheaters & Scam Artists, edited by Gianni Morelli and Chiara Schiavano, Milano, Italy: White Star Publishers, 2016, pages 180–84.

References

1. "Tom Keating: Art Fraud". JAQUO Lifestyle Magazine. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
2. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
3. MacGillivray, Donald (2 July 2005). "When is a fake not a fake? When it's a genuine forgery". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 31 December 2010.
4. "Authentication in Art Unmasked Forgers".
5. Keats, Jonathon. "Masterpieces For Everyone? The Case Of The Socialist Art Forger Tom Keating [Book Excerpt]". Forbes. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
6. Keats, Jonathon. "The Ultimate In Reality TV? Try Televised Art Forgery. [Book Excerpt #2]". Forbes. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
7. "Tom Keating, 66, a Painter; Gained Fame as Art Forger". The New York Times. 14 February 1984.
8. Magnusson, Magnus (2007) [2006]. Fakers, Forgers & Phoneys. Edinburgh: Mainstream. pp. 32–6. ISBN 978-1-84596-210-4.
9. Landesman, Peter (18 July 1999). "A 20th-Century Master Scam". The New York Times.
10. "Soaring beauty of village church". Gazette. Retrieved 27 August 2022.
11. Cook, William. "Dedham Vale | The Spectator". http://www.spectator.co.uk. Retrieved 27 August 2022.
12. Keats, Jonathon. "Masterpieces For Everyone? The Case Of The Socialist Art Forger Tom Keating [Book Excerpt]". Forbes.
13. Longdon, David (5 August 2012). "Judas Unrepentant". David Longdon Blog. Retrieved 16 October 2013.

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When a fake is not a Keating: It may be by Samuel Palmer, by a master faker, or by an unknown. Who is the creator of a suspect watercolour at the Royal Academy?
by Geraldine Norman
UK Independent
Sunday 14 March 1993 00:02

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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QUESTION: when is a Samuel Palmer not a Samuel Palmer? Answer: when it's done by Tom Keating. Or that is what art historians would nowadays have one believe. 'Did you know there was a Tom Keating at the Royal Academy?' a respected art historian asked me on the phone the other day, after we had discussed something quite different. I didn't. I didn't even know that one of the Palmers in the 'Great Age of British Watercolours' exhibition at the Royal Academy was under suspicion of being a fake.

Samuel Palmer brought an extraordinary mystical vision to landscape painting for about six years around 1830. The inspiration faded and, though he imitated it later in life, he never recaptured his youthful inspiration. The drawings remained in his family and virtually unknown until an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1926 of 'Samuel Palmer and other Disciples of William Blake'. It had a huge impact on British artists and connoisseurs; the artists imitated his work and the connoisseurs bought the watercolours from his son, A H Palmer.

In the early days his drawings were not expensive and no one is known to have started faking his work until Tom Keating took it up in the 1960s and 1970s - when prices had risen. But that is not to say that others did not try making Palmers, either for fun or to earn a few irregular pounds. Indeed, in my opinion the suspect painting at the Royal Academy - a very orange watercolour called Harvesters by Firelight - makes it clear that someone did.

I have a special interest in Tom Keating, since I was the journalist who unmasked him as a picture-faker back in 1976 - on account of his fake Samuel Palmer watercolours. So I rang round the Palmer buffs. 'When was it that your friend started out?' laughed Martin Butlin, former keeper of the British collection at the Tate. 'We know this one was in existence by 1951. Was Keating at work by then?' Keating had just left art school by 1951 and was already copying Old Masters but not, to my knowledge, making Palmers. I found a couple of Keating Palmers tucked away at the back of a drawer. One is reproduced here along with Harvesters: a clear demonstration, in my view, that the watercolour in the R A show is not by Keating. The way the foliage is treated is, perhaps, the most obvious giveaway. Keating indicates leaves by making quantities of individual brush strokes. Whoever did the R A drawing has used a black outline for the shape of the trees and filled it in with wash.


Harvesters by Firelight, 1830, Pen and black ink with watercolor and gouache on wove paper, 11 5/16 × 14 7/16 in, 28.7 × 36.7 cm, by Samuel Palmer

That puts paid to the Keating idea. But having a suspect Palmer in the Royal Academy show - acknowledged as such by the exhibition's organiser - is a very unusual bit of miscalculation. As far as I can make out from the embarrassed participants, no one realised it wasn't by Palmer until the catalogue was written and the show was on the walls.

The drawing belongs to the National Gallery in Washington, which received it as a gift from Paul Mellon in 1986. Mellon, who inherited one of the largest fortunes in America, has given the National Gallery - which was founded by his father - more than 800 pictures. It was not difficult for one fake to sneak in among them.

Mellon himself is a passionate anglophile and has formed the most important private collection of British art anywhere in the world, even rivalling the Tate. It is now mostly housed at the Yale Center for British Art. He bought the 'Palmer' watercolour at Christie's in 1981 for pounds 77,000 through his friend and agent John Baskett, then a Bond Street dealer. 'I've always thought it was a Palmer,' John Baskett told me last week. 'There was no doubt at the time.' Mellon's reaction to my enquiry was 'No comment'.

It was not until 1988 that a catalogue raisonne of Samuel Palmer's work - a catalogue, that is, which lists all known Palmers and discusses them - appeared. Raymond Lister, its author, told me: 'I included Harvesters because I felt it couldn't exactly be rejected as a Palmer - but I'm not as convinced as I was. It could be an original that someone's played about with. I don't think the red figure in front is by Palmer.'

There is an inscription on the back, Lister points out, which is particularly suspicious. It is supposed to be in the hand of Palmer's son, who did inscribe several drawings; if it was not written by him, it must have been written by someone who was consciously trying to turn the picture into a Palmer.

The inscription explains that the wild orange glow over the scene is: 'The reflection of one of the incendiary fires, fires in Kent, I think about 1830 done I think the next day. The building is, I think Ightham Mote. A H P. Subject the harvesters hurrying away the last of the harvest.' Lister wrote in his catalogue: 'The building is not Ightham Mote. Such an indecisive statement is uncharacteristic of A H Palmer. Moreover, it does not make sense: it would have been unnecessary to 'hurry away' the last of the harvest for the 1830 incendiary attacks were aimed against stacks and barns and not against growing crops'.

It is not entirely clear when doubts about the painting began to surface. 'I remember considerable enthusiasm for it when we had it for sale in 1981,' Anthony Browne of Christie's told me. However, both Martin Butlin and his successor at the Tate, Andrew Wilton, tell me they did not think it was by Samuel Palmer at the time.

Andrew Wilton is the curator of the Royal Academy show and says that the watercolour slipped in because the exhibition had to be mounted in such a hurry - he only had six months to put it together, from start to finish.

'The Palmers we wanted were not available,' Wilton said. 'I rather hoped that as the National Gallery in Washington offered it as one of the things they were happy to lend, they had sorted out the attribution.' No such thing: 'I first heard of the doubts when the Royal Academy rang me in Italy two weeks ago,' Andrew Robison, the National Gallery's curator of drawings, told me. 'If it's not by Palmer, we won't have any problem about changing the attribution but I don't yet understand what's wrong.' Piers Rodgers, secretary of the Royal Academy, maintains that the argument over the attribution is not yet resolved. 'Scholars have been discussing it for ages,' he said. 'We knew that when we put it in the show.'

The inclusion of the drawing in the exhibition has been hard luck on the pundits. Simon Jenkins, former editor of the Times, described Palmer's 'idylls of the gloaming' in a column about the Academy show, pointing especially to 'his brilliant Harvesters by Firelight'. Brian Sewell in the Evening Standard illustrated the painting in colour to demonstrate what he thought of English watercolours - but saved his reputation as a connoisseur by describing it as 'a sickening confection of glutinous marmalades coarse cut'.

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[admin]

Part 2 of 2

Masterpieces For Everyone? The Case Of The Socialist Art Forger Tom Keating [Book Excerpt]
by Jonathon Keats
[Excerpted from Forged: Why Fakes Are The Great Art Of Our Age, by Jonathon Keats, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Part II of the Keating saga can be read here.]
Forbes.com
December 13, 2012 10:55am EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Why Fakes Are The Great Art Of Our Age, by Jonathon Keats


The Ingenue, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Photo credit: Wikipedia via Zamanta)

One sunny morning in 1983, a model named Amanda slipped on an antique French blouse, swept back her long auburn hair, and turned toward the painter Tom Keating, pouting her lips as young girls did for Renoir. Though Amanda knew that the potbellied Cockney artist had counterfeited more than two thousand paintings by masters ranging from Rembrandt to Edvard Munch in his sixty-six years – and that many had fraudulently sold at auction – her face radiated childlike innocence as he loaded his palette with viridian and vermillion and alizarin crimson, colors Renoir had favored a century before.

Keating had inferred Renoir's techniques by studying the Frenchman's paintings at London's National Gallery and the Tate. He'd also read the standard textbooks from Renoir's era, and had handled Impressionist paintings as a restorer. Most important, he'd assimilated Renoir's creative process, reducing knowledge to habit. In his old-fashioned smock and full white beard, taking up a stub of sanguine chalk, Keating was as much in character as his model.

He began by drawing her figure on the canvas with a few fluid gestures. Taking up his palette, he then brushed in the pale sunlight pouring across her face. He described her contours in shadow with broad strokes of dark green background, and filled in her coif as a swathe of burnt sienna. His underwork looked nothing like the Renoirs in museums. Periodically the figure lost even the basic appearance of a woman, only to gain greater semblance to his model several brushstrokes later. For him the fickle procedure was "like love," he said, "and this is the beauty of it."

Gradually the model's visage took shape on the canvas. Keating conveyed a sense of depth by outlining Amanda's figure in cobalt blue. He used the same hue to define the bone of her cheeks, gently blended into the warmth of her skin. Then he disfigured her again with stabs of pure color. He built up the pigment into a thick mask of impasto, fusing the colors by blotting the paint with sheets of newspaper. He repeated these steps over and over. By degrees Amanda's features blurred into the anonymously sweet hues of a typical Renoir girl.

Yet even had her face remained as identifiable as in a mug shot, Amanda need hardly have worried about a visit from Scotland Yard. This subterfuge was no secret. The studio in which she posed belonged to Channel Four, where Keating's acts of artistic imposture were filmed for British national television. Starting in 1982, weekday episodes of Tom Keating on Painters – aired at 6:30 p.m. to attract a family audience – revealed the working methods of Titian and Rembrandt and Monet and Constable. In thirty-minute sessions, the potbellied Cockney demonstrated how to paint Turner's ships and van Gogh's sunflowers. Viewers adored him. As the British TV personality Magnus Magnusson later noted in an elegiac essay, Keating's popularity was "almost on a par with art historian Kenneth Clark and his pioneering 1969 BBC television series Civilisation."

The comparable status of Civilisation and Tom Keating on Painters was as revealing as it was surprising. Two men could not have come to prominence by paths more different. Heir to a Scottish textile fortune, Lord Clark was former Surveyor of the King's Pictures, director of the National Gallery, and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford. Keating was a former housepainter from the bleak Forest Hill district of south London, whose "Sexton Blakes" -– Cockney rhyming slang for fakes -– made a mockery of institutionalized erudition. Their perspectives on art were as disparate as their backgrounds. "Although Renoir's first impulse to paint came from an almost naïve sensuous delight," Clark wrote in the Burlington Magazine, "he never imagined that the mere representation of agreeable objects was the end of painting." Keating begged to differ. "He loved young girls," Keating told TV viewers. "Don't we all?"

Of course ratings on television counted for nothing in the ranks of scholarship. Keating didn't express his opinions in learned language. His ideas scarcely registered with the guardians of culture. Certainly his byline never appeared in august journals such as The Burlington Magazine, or in monographs on the likes of Renoir and Constable. His handiwork did, though –- albeit bearing signatures other than his own.

**

The greatest disappointment in Tom Keating's life came at the age of fourteen, when he was turned away from St. Dunstan's College in London. Overcoming the poor education available in Forest Hill, he'd passed an entrance exam to the respectable public school, only to be told by the headmaster that his family would have to cover the fourteen pound expense of books and clothes. "He might just as well have asked for fourteen thousand," Keating recalled in his picaresque 1977 autobiography, The Fake's Progress. His father's shilling-and-sixpence hourly wage as a housepainter could scarcely feed the overcrowded Keating household. So young Tom got a job. He worked as a delivery boy, a lather boy, a lift boy and a bell boy before entering the housepainting trade, mastering the crafts of graining and marbling just in time to be enlisted as a boiler-stoker in the Second World War.

The sole benefit of military service was eligibility for a two-year rehabilitation course, on the basis of which Keating was admitted to Goldsmiths' College, University of London. Entering the art program, he tried (as he later phrased it) "to get a bit of taste". Instead he discovered the cultural chasm separating him from his higher-class peers. The rift could be humiliating, as when they'd mocked him for praising the anti-Modernist painter Pietro Annigoni, whose academic realism could appeal only to a plebeian. Lack of refinement may even have undercut Keating's efforts to earn a diploma: While he got high marks for painterly technique, his composition was deemed insufficiently original. He left Goldsmiths' as he'd entered, an artisan.

Only indirectly did Goldsmiths' offer an escape from the shilling-and-sixpence life. In his two years, Keating had picked up a complementary set of skills working evenings and weekends for art restorers. At the esteemed Hahn Brothers in Mayfair, he learned the painstaking craft of filling in cracks -– mixing paints just light enough that they'd match the original color under a darkening coat of varnish –- but he was soon lured away by a more vigorous restorer, less burdened by ethics, a man he dubbed Fred Roberts in The Fake's Progress.

At Roberts' small shop, Keating was given jobs that thoroughly exercised his technical skills and appeased his painterly ambitions. His first big task was to fill in a hole torn through a large landscape by the 19th century Royal Academician Thomas Sidney Cooper. The canvas had been ripped by shrapnel during the Blitz. Roberts relined it ­–- laid it down on new cloth -– physically stabilizing the painting but leaving a conspicuous gap in Cooper's grazing herd of cattle. In place of the livestock, he proposed that Keating enliven the pasture with children encircling a maypole. "It was a naughty thing to do," Keating later admitted, "but the alternative was filling in cracks. More than anything else in the world I wanted to paint and I didn't care what it was that I painted."

And so it was that the fake progressed. Amongst the many canvases passing through Roberts' shop was a quaint winter scene by Frank Moss Bennett, an early 20th century British genre painter whose works were widely reproduced on cigarette cards and calendars. Sounding the tone of his fellow Goldsmiths' students, Keating made some snide remarks about the picture, and was challenged by Roberts to show he could match it. His first attempts were essentially replicas, carefully duplicating a horse-drawn coach departing a country inn. His third effort was more ambitious. "I felt that I knew so much about the artist that I could do one out of my own head," he recollected. He visited the National Maritime Museum, where he could sketch mannequins attired in period costumes. From these drawings he painted a pastiche that played on Bennett's obsession with seafaring in the age of Sir Francis Drake. "It took me exactly two weeks to complete, and when it was finished I was so proud of it I signed it with my own name."

The signature was the only detail that Roberts saw fit to correct. Without consulting Keating, he had it autographed F.M. [Frank Moss] Bennett 1937 and consigned it to a West End gallery that also fronted some of the more outlandish restorations. Keating learned about the scam only when he saw one of his ersatz Bennetts in the gallery windows. "I was astonished to discover, as I looked around, that hanging on the walls were quite a number of the paintings that I'd prettied up with boating scenes, little girls with ribbons in their hair and other additions to make them more saleable," claimed Keating in retrospect. "I wondered, as I stood there, how many other dealers in the West End went in for this kind of deception."

As hard as it is to believe that Keating was wholly oblivious to this fraud -– what other purpose could even his first maypole have served? -– witnessing it in a gallery does seem to have made his relationship with forgery more complicated. No longer was the art market an abstraction to him, distant and anonymous. Instead it became his focus, giving him a rationale for adopting the style of other painters and earning some money in their name. "It seemed disgraceful to me how many of them had died in poverty," he asserted in The Fake's Progress. "All their lives they had been exploited by unscrupulous dealers and then, as if to dishonor their memory, these same dealers continued to exploit them in death." The time had come for the commercial art establishment to learn a lesson, by his reckoning, and the poverty he shared with past generations qualified him for the job. "I was determined to do what I could to avenge my brothers and it was to this end that I decided to turn my hand to Sexton Blaking."

Some of Hendrix's friends have concluded that "Jeffrey stood to make a greater sum of money from a dead Jimi Hendrix than a living one. There was also mention of a one million dollar insurance policy covering Hendrix's life made out with Jeffrey as the beneficiary." The manager of the Experience constructed "a financial empire based on the posthumous releases of Hendrix's previously unreleased recordings." Crushing musical voices of dissent was proving to be an immensely profitable enterprise because a dead rocker leaves behind a fortune in publishing rights and royalties.

-- The Covert War Against Rock, by Alex Constantine

**

By the early 1950s, Keating had a wife and two children. They lived together in a decrepit Forest Hill flat, devoid of furniture, that doubled as his studio. What the neighborhood lacked in luxuries it made up for in junk shops, where broken old paintings of no artistic merit could be bought for mere shillings. Unable to afford fresh art supplies as a student at Goldsmiths', Keating was already accustomed to refurbishing used canvases. He began to see their dilapidation as an advantage: Anything he painted on them inherited the patina of past centuries.

He was not particular about matching the canvas to his picture. At first he favored genre painting -– "ice-skating scenes, ladies reading letters at spinnets, tavern interiors" -– pastiche subjects that lent themselves to pastiche treatment. He cribbed imagery from books and postcards. Older supports got variations on Peter de Hoogh, Adriaen Brouwer and Gabriel Metsu. Newer canvases were usually made to resemble the work of Cornelius Krieghoff, whose pictures Keating first encountered in Fred Roberts' shop.

Given the sheer number of mid-nineteenth century canvases moldering in south London junk shops, Krieghoff got by far the biggest posthumous boost. He scarcely needed Keating's assistance. A Dutch artist working in Quebec City in the 1850s, Krieghoff produced thousands of diminutive farm and tavern scenes, many of which were bought as souvenirs by British soldiers. Historians came to value them for their detailed documentation of Canadian customs. Collectors coveted them for their decorative charm. Dealers delighted in their escalating prices, reaching into the thousands of pounds by the 1950s. Keating appreciated them for Krieghoff's skillful depiction of "jolly little Brueghelesque figures", and for the fact that Krieghoff "did so many versions of the same picture" -– to which hundreds more could and would be added over the following decade.

Keating took seriously the work of mastering an artist's style, teaching himself all he could learn on his own, but this care with technique was intentionally offset by his recklessness with materials. Rather than scraping down the old potboilers he bought in junk shops, he simply cleaned them with alcohol and reprimed them with a layer of rabbit-skin glue. He painted directly onto this surface, often in acrylics, sometimes brushing on a layer of darkening varnish before the paint cured. The results were predictably catastrophic. Even if his synthetic pigments were never detected by scientific testing, the paint would start to peel in a few decades, betraying his ruse. Ultimately all that would remain was the original potboiler, more often than not the portrait of a grim British grandmother.

Even more anarchic than his method of creation was his mode of distribution. Keating sold his first Sextons in the Forest Hill junk shops where he bought his canvases, seldom calling attention to the signatures, charging as little as five pounds apiece, rarely more than fifty. By 1956 he'd left his family for itinerant work in Scotland- – restoring the trifling art collections of minor Highlands castles -– a job that unaccountably inspired him to take up French Impressionism. He tossed his Sisley landscapes and Renoir girls into country auctions together with the Dutch genre pictures. It was a buyer's market. "Sometimes a farmer might write to me and enclose a fiver for a Krieghoff that hadn't attracted any bidders at a cattle auction," he recalled. "His wife liked it and was a fiver all right?" Another time a Krieghoff hammered at a pig auction for eighteen pence.

However the vast majority of fakes were just given away, along with sketches drawn in imitation of Rembrandt -– penned with home-made seagull quills -– and watercolors painted in the styles of J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Girtin. In the Highlands and then back in London, Keating gave pictures to friends and neighbors, acquaintances at the corner pub, the man who read his gas meter. In some cases he regarded fakery as a means of helping people in need, while also bringing chaos to the art market when the forgeries were cashed in at auction. At least several Sexton Krieghoffs sold at major houses such as Sotheby's and Phillips, though generally at junk shop prices since the catalogue entries were shrewdly vague. Rumors about forgery had the desired effect, depressing all Krieghoff prices, curbing dealers' profits.

"I've been a socialist all my life," Keating declared in his autobiography. Yet he was onto something more subversive than merely unhinging the market. With his Sexton de Hooghs and Sexton Renoirs, Keating made the masters widely available and broadly affordable -– even if only in ersatz form -– allowing practically anyone to live with a magisterial collection. In a country as stratified as mid-Century England, where culture was interchangeable with status, his Sexton Blakes afforded a sort of cut-rate cultivation.

**

Tom Keating deemed himself a successor to Edgar Degas because Degas mentored the British artist Walter Sickert, who'd mentored one of Keating's early mentors. It was a tenuous connection, reinforced in Keating's mind by a Degas self-portrait he counterfeited in 1962. As he told the story, he'd no recollection of making the pastel. "It sounds ridiculous, I know, but Degas really did draw that picture through me and many others besides," he claimed. "I woke up one morning and found it on the easel, in place of the scratchy, silly daub that I'd been working on the day before."

The drawing impressed a couple of Keating's friends, siblings who were junk dealers in Kew. In The Fake's Progress he dubbed the pair Roger and Anne, and said they began pestering him for paintings to sell after Anne showed the pastel to a Paris gallery and was offered two thousand pounds. Keating's response was characteristically impulsive. First he ripped up his drawing. Then he went into business with them.

Roger and Anne supplied the canvases and the clients. Keating prepared the inventory. The artists he chose to Sexton -– the German Expressionists -– he deemed the opposite of Degas. "It may be unfair, but I have never liked them all that much," he later explained. "You only have to look at the self-portraits of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff with his barbaric fizzogg and monocle, to see how arrogant they were." But the Expressionists were in vogue with collectors, and Keating found them easy to mimic. Cribbing from "a little paperback that cost a few bob" he turned out twenty-one paintings in a weekend under bankable names including Kirchner, Nolde, and Pechstein. To save money, he simulated passages of thick impasto by mixing poster colors with house-painter's emulsion. He rendered everything else in acrylic. As usual the canvases were old potboilers, sealed with rabbit-skin glue, and sometimes underpainted with assorted rude words. For those he used lead white, a traditional oil pigment he reckoned would show up in an x-ray due to the heavy metal content.

It was a peculiar business strategy to say the least, as if Keating sought to sabotage himself (and his partners) for straying too far into capitalism. Roger hawked a couple dozen of the paintings to the tony Redfern Gallery in Mayfair, where he was received by the gallery's senior director, Harry Tatlock Miller. As Miller later recalled, the junk dealer claimed to know nothing about art, and to have acquired the works blindly from the estate of an old German émigré. In terms of provenance, the story was worthless. The amount Miller offered was negligible. Then Redfern singled out twelve of the paintings they believed to be authentic, and sold five of them in a summer exhibition.

If Keating heard about this, it didn't make him more entrepreneurial. Instead he found himself possessed by Francisco de Goya [30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828]. As Degas had done, Goya enlisted him to create a self-portrait. "Never before or since have I felt so strongly the presence of a master," he recollected. "The old boy was standing there right next to me and he was guiding my hand so firmly that I felt I had no control over what was taking shape on the canvas." In the end, Keating found himself staring at an image of Goya as he looked in old age -– similar to Goya's famous self-portrait of 1815 -– albeit rendered atop a Scottish potboiler in a careless mix of oils and acrylics. Keating embellished the picture with an inscription: Death comes to us all. (Because he knew no Spanish, he had the proprietor of a local coffee shop translate his English. "La muerte viene para todos," the bemused Spaniard scribbled on his bill for egg and chips.) Keating hung the portrait on his studio wall. He made no effort to sell it. For him it vindicated a slight quite different from the grudge he held on behalf of his brother Impressionists. Goya had not been wronged by the art market in his opinion, but by the museum establishment which destroyed Old Masters' work by over-restoration. This painting was a replacement, and the museums were not fit to own it.

That Goya had chosen him did not surprise Keating any more than he was amazed to have been enlisted by Degas [19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917]. Evidently he believed past masters recognized themselves in him as he saw himself in them. His creation of their self-portraits showed their shared sympathies across time and nationality: Painters belonged to the same culture, and could understand each other in ways that museum professionals and peddlers could never comprehend. Yet Keating was not condoning an alternate elite. He considered the culture open to anyone willing to wield a brush.

[Excerpted from Forged: Why Fakes Are The Great Art Of Our Age, by Jonathon Keats, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Part II of the Keating saga can be read here.]

***************************

Tom Keating on Painters
September 19, 2022
Written by Darby Milbrath for Issue 20



In August, I was living alone and painting on an old dairy farm. When painting wasn’t going well or coming easily, my boyfriend sent me a link to a video that he thought would be helpful: Tom Keating on Painters – “Vincent Van Gogh.” It was a show on how to rip off a master painter in 30 minutes. The program first aired in 1982 at 6:30 pm on weekdays, to attract a family audience, with Tom Keating, a famous British art forger, illustrating the techniques and processes of artists such as Titian, Rembrandt, Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne. Each episode begins with an animated sketch of the artist painting with his smock and palette to a romantic theme song made by the same composer who arranged the themes for Gone with the Wind and Great Expectations. The artist’s signature, Tom Keating appears in a gold gilded frame, his cursive handwriting indicates a jolly optimism with the decorative letter “K”, its leg like a coat-tail, and a hurried, carelessness with its crossed “T” dashing off ahead, and an all-around old world romanticism to its right-leaning slant. The camera pans to him in his studio, set up with a somewhat drab but cheerful still life of what appears to be handmade artificial sunflowers and magazine cut-outs of Japanese prints.

“This week we would like to talk a little of the artist Vincent Van Gogh and show you a little of his techniques.” Keating looks a bit like a teddy bear. “I have here a made up still life,” he says sort of apologetically. “And of course this is not naughty,” he emphasizes, “because the old masters always used artificial flowers if they were taking a long time.”

After about fifteen seconds of this, he begins quickly blocking in his canvas with yellow ochre, while he goes on unscripted to tell the audience about Van Gogh’s life. Watching this episode midday, lying on the mattress on my floor, was the first and only art training I’ve ever had. I’ve never seen anyone paint like that before: haste verging on debauchery. He blobs the paint on his canvases confidently, with big brushes to save time. “Don’t want to muck about,” he says.


Tom Keating after Degas


Tom Keating after Renoir

Without utilizing special effects, Keating endeavoured to begin and finish an entire painting within the episode. Whenever he speaks about the masters taking years to complete the paintings that he bangs out in the thirty minute program, he’ll always humbly remind the audience: “Of course it’s easy to copy a thing, I mean no disrespect to the artists, thank you very much.” In other episodes, his paintings of portraits—while starting out fairly distinguishable—often lose even the basic appearance of a figure. In the episode on Renoir, he describes how the painting, “will come to you and leave you,” with a single brushstroke, “like love,” he says. “And that’s the beauty of it.” Often Keating’s voice will grow softer as he describes brushstrokes as “kisses,” demonstrating how to “caress the flesh” while painting the inner thigh of a nude in a near-lusty whisper. Keating teaches viewers how to paint Degas’ “sweetie-pies” as he calls them, Van Gogh’s sunflowers, and Turner’s ships. While he paints Turner’s fluffy clouds in thick impasto he explains: “It comes from years of buttering bread…or margarine in my case.” Keating’s plainspoken techniques demystify painting. Each episode, while hurriedly painting, he speaks about the artist’s life as if they’re an old friend, using their first names familiarly and regularly muttering apologies to the audience about how poorly a job he’s doing, or how the old master would’ve done it much better. “Of course I don’t find painting easy,” he admits. Despite his confidence before the easel and his irreverent attitude toward the art world, Keating often made self-degrading comments throughout his TV program. Apparently his ratings were almost as high as Civilisation, the late-60s BBC series of art historian Lord Kenneth Clark. Clark was a lord, a director of the National Art Gallery and a professor at Oxford. Keating was a house painter, a true Cockney, a fake who destabilized institutionalized art, only dodging criminal charges due to poor health.

Keating painted more than 2,000 forgeries by over 100 different artists in his sixty-six years. Many had fraudulently sold at auctions with the total profits estimated at over 10 million dollars. “I flooded the market with the work of Palmer and many others,” the artist said. “Not for gain (I hope I am no materialist) but simply as a protest against the merchants who make capital out of those I am proud to call my brother artists, both living and dead. It seemed disgraceful to me how many of them had died in poverty,” he defended in The Fake’s Progress, his autobiography. “All their lives they had been exploited by unscrupulous dealers and then, as if to dishonor their memory, these same dealers continued to exploit them in death.” As with other art forgers like Han van Meegeren and Elmyr de Hory, resentment was one of Keating’s motives to retaliate against the art world. “I was determined to do what I could to avenge my brothers and it was to this end that I decided to turn my hand to ‘Sexton Blaking’.” He called all his phoney pictures “Sexton Blakes,” Cockney slang for fakes.

Keating was born into a low-income family in a poor neighborhood in South London. His father was a house painter. His family couldn’t afford to give Tom a proper education so instead he began working at a young age as a delivery boy, a lather boy, a lift boy, and a bell boy before working for the family business painting houses. “I’ll do a bit of house painting,” he jokes in the episode on Degas, as he paints the walls of the dance studio in pale greens. Grumbling, he says, “Now step back, see what you’ve done, shudder, and carry on.” He was later enlisted as a boiler-stoker in World War II. After military service he was admitted into the art programme at Goldsmiths, University of London as a rehabilitation course and “to get a bit of taste,” as he later phrased it.

He didn’t last two years in school, dropping out because of the “humiliating” cultural rift separating him from the upper class. Although he got high marks on technique, he was criticized for lacking originality. He ended up getting a job as an art restorer and learned the painstaking techniques of matching colours and varnishes and repairing cracks and crevices. He began working with a less ethical art restorer, Fred Roberts, who wasn’t concerned with preserving the integrity of the artist. On one occasion, after Roberts filled a large hole in a landscape painting by the 19th century Royal Academician Thomas Sidney Cooper that had been blown out from shrapnel during the war, he suggested that Keating paint the gap and brighten up the pasture with children encircling a maypole. “It was a naughty thing to do,” Keating later admitted, “but the alternative was filling in cracks. More than anything else in the world I wanted to paint and I didn’t care what it was that I painted.” Roberts once challenged Keating to make a replica of a Frank Moss Bennett, a quaint British painter whose wintry scenes decorated stationary and calendars. Keating made a couple of replicas and then thought he knew so much of the artist he could create a new scene from his head. The finished painting so impressed Roberts that he rubbed out Keating’s signature and signed it F.M. [Frank Moss] Bennett, 1937. Without telling Keating or sharing the profits, he sold the fake to a gallery where Keating saw it hung in the window. “I was astonished to discover, as I looked around, that hanging on the walls were quite a number of the paintings that I’d prettied up with boating scenes, little girls with ribbons in their hair and other additions to make them more saleable,” claimed Keating in retrospect. “I wondered, as I stood there, how many other dealers went in for this kind of deception.”

Keating saw the gallery system to be rotten, dominated by “avant-garde fashion, with critics and dealers often conniving to line their own pockets at the expense both of naive collectors and impoverished artists.” Tom moved into a decrepit flat with no furniture, which doubled as a studio, and began scouring the London junk shops for old canvases and cheap materials to continue making his “Sexton Blakes.” Keating never actually copied the masters’ work, he simply painted in imitation of their style. This method of inventing new pictures, which demands creativity and a greater understanding of the artist, pleased Keating’s painterly ambitions very much. Keating had a great respect and understanding of all the artists he imitated but was always reckless in his handling of the materials. He often used house paint and poster paint to mix in with his acrylics as a cheaper way to achieve the impasto works. At times he wouldn’t bother preparing his antique canvases he found at the junk shops out of laziness, so that in just a few years the paint would peel right off to reveal what was originally underneath. Keating often planted what he called “time bombs” like this in his paintings. Because of his understanding of the chemicals used in art restoration, Keating would purposely paint with layers of glycerin, which would destroy the painting once it was cleaned by a restorer, proving it was a fake. He often wrote obscenities under his paintings, like “Bollocks!”, in lead white so that it could be seen by the experts who x-rayed the painting to check its authenticity. These little acts of trickery and self-sabotage were a way for him to offset the whole operation from leaning too far towards capitalism.


Tom Keating after Monet


Tom Keating after Renoir

He claimed to have never signed any of his sextons and always pointed to the corruption of the art world when questioning how they all happened to be signed eventually as fakes. Apparently he sold his works for under $50 a piece. “Many I just gave away to friends or acquaintances. I’ve never had much lolly [money], never owned a car in me life, never owned anything much at all. That’s the only way to keep sane, you know.” Keating was a bit of a superstitious spiritualist. There are accounts where Keating claims he was channeling the old masters. For instance, there was a Degas pastel he had done that he felt Degas himself had painted. Keating described this in a 77’ Maclean’s interview called “The Magnificent Fraud.” “It was in 1956 I think, and I was experiencing ghosts—a terrifying experience—the first psychic experience I ever had. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but Degas really did draw that picture through me and many others besides,” he claimed. “I woke up one morning and found it on the easel, in place of the scratchy, silly daub that I’d been working on the day before.” He apparently took the drawing once it was passed off as “real” by many experts and promptly ripped it up. “And I burned a Van Gogh self-portrait for the same reason, but that was also because I can’t stand having Van Goghs around, you see; they’re more of those objects I can’t seem to live with. Have you ever stayed in a room with a Van Gogh on the wall for a long time? It’ll drive you loony after a while.” Keating was also at one time possessed by Goya. “Never before or since have I felt so strongly the presence of a master,” he recalled. “The old boy was standing there right next to me and he was guiding my hand so firmly that I felt I had no control over what was taking shape on the canvas.” The painting was a self-portrait of Goya which Keating kept and hung in his bedroom with no intention to sell. In the book Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age, author Jonathon Keats wrote: “Evidently he believed past masters recognized themselves in him as he saw himself in them. His creation of their self-portraits showed their shared sympathies across time and nationality: Painters belonged to the same culture, and could understand each other in ways that museum professionals and peddlers could never comprehend. Yet Keating was not condoning an alternate elite. He considered the culture open to anyone willing to wield a brush.”

Keating loved to teach painting but didn’t have the education to be a professor. Instead he taught classes in a London railway station to young painters in exchange for old books and tobacco. One of his keenest students was a sixteen-year-old girl named Jane Kelly. He taught her everything he knew about painting and restoration and eventually despite their ages became lovers. “I think any artist who has learnt on a one-to-one basis from a master must love the master,” Kelly explained to the Toronto Star in 1979. “It’s absolute falling in love with the person and all they stand for, in the same way that one falls in love with Rembrandt.” Keating, a rogue who’s favourite painter to defraud was Rembrandt, proved to be a bit vulgar, even to his family audience during his dinner-hour TV show. “Putting little bits of lipstick on the ladies is a delightful occupation,” he says while painting the lips of the young girls in his Degas episode, “but taking it off’s better.” Kelly played a large part in selling and distributing Keating’s sextons.

Inevitably, they were found out by a journalist of The Times of London named Geraldine Norman, who was tipped off after writing an article investigating thirteen fake Samuel Palmer watercolours. The person who tipped her off was Jane Kelly’s brother. Keating openly confessed shortly after an article by Norman ran in The Times with allegations of forgery. Apparently Keating wasn’t upset with Norman for exposing him, and felt a deep connection to her husband Frank, who was a thief-turned-playwright best known for his Cockney comedy Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’be. The two became quick friends and within hours Frank agreed to write Tom’s autobiography. Hundreds of journalists and photographers were there at the launch of The Fake’s Progress. Keating and Kelly were both finally arrested and charged with conspiracy to defraud in 1977. Kelly pleaded guilty, promising to testify against Keating. They had separated many years before the trial, and she said he had a Svengali-like control over her. Keating pleaded not guilty on the basis that he was working under the guiding spirit of the masters. Shockingly, the case against Keating was dropped completely due to his injuries after a near-fatal motorcycle accident, but Kelly had to serve time in prison because she pleaded guilty. Keating recovered shortly after the charges were dropped and enjoyed his new found success and fame. He was offered his TV program and his sexton blakes, now being shown as “Tom Keatings” were becoming valuable in their own right. His paintings were being sold at a gallery across the street from the courthouse. There are people forging Tom Keating’s forgeries now.

Watching Tom Keating On Painters that day, seeing how easily and confidently he painted his imitations, how quickly he turned out each picture, made me feel even more confused about my own painting. The landscape I had been struggling with, of the wheat fields and apple orchards on the farm I was staying in, could be quickly resolved and finished if I just imitated Van Gogh. I already imitate all of the masters. That’s why I started painting—because I thought it would be a bit of a joke to paint naive versions of masters works as a young girl with no art training. One of my first attempts was a finger painting of figures playing ring-around-the-rosy, after Matisse. I relate to Keating’s simple sentimentality and romanticism for the past. It’s so easy to feel like an imposter. I think that the only way to overcome that feeling is with faith, a sort of channelling of the old masters spirits. I also feel that I’ve channelled those that inspired me. Am I channeling Tom Keating? At the end of every episode Keating stops painting just as quickly as he started, turns to the audience abruptly and announces quietly, sometimes a bit disappointingly, “I think that’s about all I can do on that. Thank you very much.”

[admin]

Eric Hebborn
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/28/22


Artist Eric Hebborn with his original drawing in the manner of 15th century artist, Fra Bartolomeo. Photo by Tim Ockenden - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images.

Eric Hebborn
Born: 20 March 1934, South Kensington, London, England
Died: 11 January 1996 (aged 61), Rome, Italy
Education: Royal Academy
Known for: Painting, Sculpture, Drawing, Art forgery
Movement: Realism

Eric Hebborn (20 March 1934 – 11 January 1996) was an English painter, draughtsman, art forger and later an author.

Early life

Eric Hebborn was born in South Kensington, London in 1934.[1] His mother was born in Brighton and his father in Oxford. According to his autobiography, his mother beat him constantly as a child. At the age of eight, he states that he set fire to his school and was sent to Longmoor reformatory in Harold Wood, although his sister Rosemary disputes this.[citation needed] Teachers encouraged his painting talent and he became connected to the Maldon Art Club, where he first exhibited at the age of 15.

Hebborn attended Chelmsford Art School and Walthamstow Art School before attending the Royal Academy. He flourished at the academy, winning the Hacker Portrait prize and the Silver Award, and the British Prix de Rome in Engraving, a two-year scholarship to the British School at Rome in 1959.[2] There he became part of the international art scene, establishing acquaintances with many artists and art historians, including Soviet spy Sir Anthony Blunt in 1960, who told Hebborn that a couple of his drawings looked like Poussins. This sowed the seeds of his forgery career.

Hebborn returned to London, where he was hired by art restorer George Aczel. During his employ he was instructed not only to restore paintings, but to alter and improve them. Aczel graduated him from restoring existing paintings to "restoring" paintings on entirely blank canvases so that they could be sold for more money. A falling out over Hebborn's knowledge of painting and restoration destroyed the relationship between him and Aczel.

Hebborn and his lover Graham David Smith[3] also frequented a junk and antique shop near Leicester Square, where Hebborn befriended one of the owners, Marie Gray. In organizing the prints catalogued in the shop, Hebborn began to learn more about paper, and its history and uses in art. It was on some of these blank old pieces of paper that Hebborn made his first forgeries.

His first true forgeries were pencil drawings after Augustus John, based on a drawing of a child by Andrea Schiavone. Smith states that several of these were sold to their landlord Mr Davis, several to Bond Street galleries and two or three through Christie's sale rooms.[3]

Eventually Hebborn decided to settle in Italy with Smith. They founded a private gallery there.

Life as a forger

When contemporary critics did not seem to appreciate his own paintings, Hebborn began to copy the style of old masters such as: Corot, Castiglione, Mantegna, Van Dyck, Poussin, Ghisi, Tiepolo, Rubens, Jan Breughel and Piranesi. Art historians such as Sir John Pope Hennessy declared his paintings to be both authentic and stylistically brilliant and his paintings were sold for tens of thousands of pounds through art auction houses, including Christie's and Sotheby's.[4] According to Hebborn himself, he had sold thousands of fake paintings, drawings and sculptures. Most of the drawings Hebborn created were his own work, made to resemble the style of historical artists—and not slightly altered or combined copies of older work.

In 1978 a curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Konrad Oberhuber, was examining a pair of drawings he had purchased for the museum from Colnaghi, an established and reputable old-master dealer in London: one by Savelli Sperandio and the other by Francesco del Cossa. Oberhuber noticed that two drawings had been executed on the same kind of paper.

Oberhuber was taken aback by the similarities of the paper used in the two pieces and decided to alert his colleagues in the art world. Upon finding another fake "Cossa" at the Morgan Library, this one having passed through the hands of at least three experts, Oberhuber contacted Colnaghi, the source of all three fakes. Colnaghi, in turn, informed the worried curators that all three had been acquired from Hebborn,[5] although Hebborn was not publicly named.[4]

Colnaghi waited a full eighteen months before revealing the deception to the media, and even then never mentioned Hebborn's name, for fear of a libel suit. Alice Beckett states that she was told '...no one talks about him...The trouble is he's too good'.[6] Thus Hebborn continued to create his forgeries, changing his style slightly to avoid any further unmasking, and manufactured at least 500 more drawings between 1978 and 1988.[2] The profit made from his forgeries is estimated to be more than 30 million dollars.[7]

Confession, criticism and death

In 1984 Hebborn admitted to a number of forgeries -– and feeling as though he had done nothing wrong, he used the press generated by his confession to denigrate the art world.

In his autobiography Drawn to Trouble (1991), Hebborn continued his assault on the art world, critics and art dealers. He spoke openly about his ability to deceive supposed art experts who (for the most part) were all too eager to play along with the ruse for the sake of profit. Hebborn also claimed that some of the works that had been proven genuine were actually his fakes. During this period, Hebborn went on record to state that Sir Anthony Blunt and he had never been lovers.

On one page he offers a side-by-side comparison of his forgeries of Henri Leroy by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and the authentic drawing, challenging "art experts" to tell them apart.[5]

On 8 January 1996, shortly after the publication of the Italian edition of his book The Art Forger's Handbook, Eric Hebborn was found lying in a street in Rome, having suffered massive head trauma possibly delivered by a blunt instrument. He died in hospital on 11 January 1996.[5]

The provenance of many artworks attributed to Hebborn, including some which are alleged to hang in renowned collections, continues to be debated. Both the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City deny that they feature any Hebborn forgeries, although this was disputed by Hebborn himself.[4]

Legacy

A documentary film Eric Hebborn: Portrait of a Master Forger, featuring an extended interview with Hebborn at his home in Italy, was produced for the BBC's Omnibus strand and broadcast in 1991.



The 2014 novel In the Shadow of an Old Master is based on the mystery surrounding Eric Hebborn's death and its aftermath.[8]

In October 2014 it was announced that 236 drawings were to be sold, in individual lots, ranging in price from £100 to £500 each, by auctioneers Webbs of Wilton in Wiltshire. On 23 October 2014 the drawings went on to sell for over £50,000, with one sanguine drawing, after a design by Michelangelo, selling for £2,200, more than 18 times its expected price; Hebborn's modern drawing manual, The Language of Line, complete with pencil corrections and edits, sold for more than £3,000.[9] Although the identity of the successful purchaser of The Language of Line remains unknown, and no further copies are thought to have been in existence, Hebborn's former agent Brian Balfour-Oatts allowed The Guardian to have sight of the manuscript, which had been sent to him by a friend of the artist. Details of the previously unpublished text were published by the newspaper in August 2015.[10]

Hebborn's books

• Drawn to Trouble, Mainstream, 1991 ISBN 1-85158-369-6
• The Art Forger's Handbook, Overlook, 1997 (posthumous) ISBN 1-58567-626-8
• Confessions of a Master Forger, Cassell, 1997 (posthumous reprint of Drawn to Trouble, with epilogue by Brian Balfour-Oatts) ISBN 0-304-35023-0

See also

• Han van Meegeren
• Tom Keating

References

1. (in French)Delarge Dictionnaire
2. Death of a Forger Archived 2 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine by Denis Dutton University of Canterbury
3. Celebration: The Autobiography of Graham David Smith, Graham David Smith, Mainstream, 1996 ISBN 1-85158-843-4
4. CNN.com The prolific forger whose fake 'Old Masters' fooled the art world, 24 October 2019
5. False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, Thomas Hoving, Simon & Schuster, 1996 ISBN 0-684-83148-1
6. "Fakes: forgery and the art world", Alice Beckett, RCB, 1995
7. "Authentication in Art Unmasked Forgers".
8. Blake, P. J. (2014). In the Shadow of an Old Master. London: Matador. ISBN 9781783065080
9. "Art forger Eric Hebborn collection sells for thousands". BBC News. 23 October 2014. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
10. Alberge, Dalya (24 August 2015). "Great art forger continues to ridicule experts from beyond the grave". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 August 2015.

External links

• Artfakes
• Eric Hebborn – Portrait of a Master Forger on YouTube

**************************

Eric Hebborn & Graham David Smith
by Elisa Rolle
March 20, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Eric Hebborn (20 March 1934 – 11 January 1996) was a British painter and art forger and later an author.

Eric Hebborn was born in the London suburb of South Kensingtonin 1934. His mother was born in Brighton and his father in Oxford. According to his autobiography, his mother beat him constantly as a child. At the age of eight, he states that he set fire to his school and was sent to Longmoor reformatory in Harold Wood, although his sister Rosemary disputes this. Teachers encouraged his painting talent and he became connected to the Maldon Art Club, where he first exhibited at the age of 15.

Hebborn attended Chelmsford Art School and Walthamstow Art School before attending the Royal Academy. He flourished at the Academy, winning the Hacker Portrait prize and the Silver Award, and the British Prix de Rome in Engraving, a two-year scholarship to the British School at Rome in 1959. There he became part of the international art scene and formed acquaintances with many artists and art historians, including the British spy, Sir Anthony Blunt in 1960, who told Hebborn that a couple of his drawings looked like Poussins. This sowed the seeds of his forgery career.

Hebborn returned to London where he was hired by art restorer George Aczel. During his employ he was instructed not only to restore paintings, but to alter them and improve them. George Aczel graduated him from restoring existing paintings to "restoring" paintings on entirely blank canvases so that they could be sold for more money. A falling out over Eric's knowledge of painting and restoration destroyed the relationship between Aczel and Hebborn.

Eric and his lover Graham David Smith also frequented a junk and antique shop near Leicester Square, where Eric befriended one of the owners, Marie Gray. In organizing the prints catalogued in the shop Eric began to understand more about paper, and its history and uses in art. It was on some of these blank, but old, pieces of paper that Eric made his first forgeries.

His first true forgeries were pencil drawings after Augustus John and were based on a drawing of a child by Andrea Schiavone. Graham Smith states that several of these were sold to their landlord Mr Davis, several to Bond Street galleries and two or three through Christie's sale rooms.

Eventually Hebborn decided to settle in Italy with Graham, and they founded a private gallery there.

When contemporary critics did not seem to appreciate his own paintings, Hebborn began to copy the style of old masters such as: Corot, Castiglione, Mantegna, Van Dyck, Poussin, Ghisi, Tiepolo, Rubens, Jan Breughel and Piranesi. Art historians such as Sir John Pope Hennessy declared his paintings to be both authentic and stylistically brilliant and his paintings were sold for tens of thousands of pounds through art auction houses, including Christie's. According to Hebborn himself, he had sold thousands of fake paintings, drawings and sculptures. Most of the drawings Hebborn created were his own work, made to resemble the style of historical artists—and not slightly altered or combined copies of older work.

In 1978 a curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Konrad Oberhuber, was examining a pair of drawings he had purchased for the museum from Colnaghi an established and reputable old-master dealer in London, one by Savelli Sperandio and the other by Francesco del Cossa. Oberhuber noticed that two drawings had been executed on the same kind of paper.

Oberhuber was taken aback by the similarities of the paper used in the two pieces and decided to alert his colleagues in the art world. Upon finding another fake "Cossa" at the Morgan Library, this one having passed through the hands of at least three experts, Oberhuber contacted Colnaghi, the source of all three fakes. Colnaghi, in turn, informed the worried curators that all three had been acquired from Hebborn.

Colnaghi waited a full eighteen months before revealing the deception to the media, and, even then never mentioned Hebborn's name, for fear of a libel suit. Alice Beckett states that she was told '...no one talks about him...The trouble is he's too good'. Thus Hebborn continued to create his forgeries, changing his style slightly to avoid any further unmasking, and manufactured at least 500 more drawings between 1978 and 1988.

In 1984 Hebborn confessed to the forgeries —and feeling as though he had done nothing wrong, he used the press generated by his confession to denigrate the art world.

In his autobiography Drawn to Trouble (1991), Hebborn continued his assault on the art world, critics and art dealers. He boasted of how easily he had fooled supposed art experts and how eager the art dealers were to declare his works authentic to maximize their profits. Hebborn also claimed that some of the works that had been proven genuine were actually his fakes and that Sir Anthony Blunt had not been his lover, as stated in some articles. On one page he offers a side-by-side comparison of his forgeries of Henri Leroy by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and the authentic drawing, challenging "art experts" to tell them apart.

On 8 January 1996, shortly after the publication of the Italian edition of his book The Art Forger's Handbook, Eric Hebborn was found lying in a street in Rome, his skull crushed with a blunt instrument. He died in hospital on 11 January 1996.

The provenance of many paintings connected to Hebborn, some of which hang in renowned collections, continues to be debated.

A documentary film Eric Hebborn: Portrait Of A Master Forger, featuring an extended interview with Hebborn at his home in Italy, was produced for the BBC Omnibus strand and broadcast in 1991.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hebborn

Graham David Smith (born 1937) is an artist and writer currently living in London. He has also worked in the USA under the name Paul Cline.



Born in the East End, Smith attended Walthamstow art school where in 1956 he met and became the lover of Eric Hebborn, who was to become a notorious art forger. Smith moved on to the Royal College of Art and Hebborn to the Royal Academy, but the couple stayed together for the next 13 years.

Upon Hebborn's return from a two-year stay in Italy after winning the Academy's Prix-de-Rome, the couple lived together in the run-down Cumberland Hotel in Highbury. They set up business buying and selling art, and spent many hours scouring junk shops for bargains. They befriended Marie Gray, who owned a shop near Leicester Square, and it was at her suggestion and from her stock that they used blank sheets of period paper upon which Hebborn could create original drawings, while Smith 'antiqued' them.

In 1963 they moved to Italy and opened a gallery, which attracted the attention of several of the art cognoscenti of the day. Notable amongst them was Sir Anthony Blunt, who often stayed with the couple when visiting Rome.

Smith and Hebborn grew apart and in 1969 Smith returned to London. He moved into fabric and wallpaper design, creating stylised designs of trees, flowers, birds and animals for Jean Muir and Osborn & Little, amongst others.

In the late 1970s Smith relocated with his lover John Elliker to California, and again changed artistic direction, now working in book illustration under the name Paul Cline.

After Elliker died in 1987, Smith began to create a series of erotic drawings influenced by the medieval Dance of Death, and the resurrection of the genre by the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada. These reflected his horror at the impact of AIDS on the homosexual community. Geraldine Norman, in her article in the Independent newspaper refers to them as 'terrifying' and states that they use 'a highly finished academic style, reminiscent of the fine drawing taught by 19th century French academies'. They were exhibited in the Rita Dean gallery in San Diego.

At this time Smith also lived a parallel life on the fringe of the hustler community in Los Angeles. He became friendly with Rick Castro and memorably appeared as Ambrose Sapperstein in his 1996 movie Hustler White.

Smith's autobiography was published in 1996, which, he says, he wrote partly to refute some of the claims of Hebborn's own autobiographical work.

In 1997 Smith returned to London where he now lives. He continues to write, mainly poetry, and to create further tableaux drawings on death and homo-erotic themes.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_David_Smith

Further Readings:

Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger: A Memoir by Eric Hebborn
Hardcover: 380 pages
Publisher: Random House (April 27, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679420843
ISBN-13: 978-0679420842
Amazon: Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger: A Memoir

A premier art forger describes his rags-to-riches journey into the dark side of the art world, detailing the shady intrigues of the world's great museums and auction houses and offering a lesson in forgery techniques. 15,000 first printing.

Celebration: The Autobiography of Graham David Smith by Graham David Smith
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing (February 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1851588434
ISBN-13: 978-1851588435
Amazon: Celebration: The Autobiography of Graham David Smith

Graham David Smith has lived a life overflowing with incident and adventure. This autobiography is a memoir of an eventful and picaresque journey through five decades and across two continents. It shows us the man in the circumstances and the places that formed him: in the slums of London shortly before the Blitz, where he was raped at the age of six; at the Royal College of Art, watching David Hockney perform in drag; submerging himself in the "dolce vita" of Rome in the 1960s with his lover, the celebrated art forger Eric Hebborn, where he became a hustler and first explored the world of S&M. Back in London in the 1970s he embarked on an endless round of drugs, parties and sex, somehow finding the time to paint and design fabrics. By the 1980s he was in Laguna Beach, California, a pleasure-ground of cocaine, sex and sun, the days filled with surfing, party boys and drug deals gone wrong - a hedonistic heaven before AIDS took hold. Smith is revealed as a friend and confidant of Derek Jacobi, Sir Anthony Blunt, Christine Keeler, Fellini, Pasolini, David Bowie and Lindsay Kemp. The autobiograhy celebrates what it means to be alive.

******************************

Drawings and paintings by the 'greatest forger of the 20th Century' are to be auctioned nearly 20 years after his brutal murder
by Amanda Williams
Daily Mail
PUBLISHED: 07:42 EDT, 1 June 2015 | UPDATED: 08:54 EDT, 1 June 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

• Eric Hebborn duped art dealers and galleries world-wide with paintings
• Created works in style of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Claude
• His work was so convincing that dealers sold them on as genuine originals
• Hebborn was murdered in Italy in 1996 and his killing remains unsolved

His forgeries were so expertly executed that they duped hundreds of art critics the world over - including top auction house Christie's.

But now the artwork of master conman Eric Hebborn, whose forgeries included copies of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Claude, Augustus John and Bandinelli, is set for its own lucrative auction - almost 20 years after he was brutally murdered in Italy

The late Hebborn, one of the world's most notorious art forgers, was so convincing that dealers sold his copies on as genuine originals, and much of his undetected work still hangs in galleries and museums around the world.


An oil on canvas painting in the style of Claude by master forger Eric Hebborn. He fooled art dealers, galleries and auction houses worldwide with his work in the style of Old Masters, and many of his works which were sold as originals still hang in museums and galleries


A drawing 'After' Michaelangelo - mimicking the style of old master. As well as the right paper and paint, he used glues prepared to a specific recipe to stop ink blotting and lines from bleeding


His pencil drawing of Augustus John's 'Young Girl', which is signed 'John' in the bottom right corner was sold at Christie's in London in in June 1989 as an original Augustus John and even has the auctioneer's stamp on the back of it from the time of sale

One is a pencil drawing of Augustus John's 'Young Girl', which is signed 'John' in the bottom right corner.

It was sold at Christie's in London in in June 1989 as an original Augustus John and even has the auctioneer's stamp on the back of it from the time of sale.

Now a collection of his works that expertly copy the style of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Claude, Augustus John and Bandinelli are now being auctioned by Webbs of Wilton in Wiltshire.

Most of the Hebborn's work in the 1960s and 70s were original sketches made to resemble the style of historical artists rather than slightly altered copies of older work.

His deception was revealed in 1978 when a curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, US, examined two drawings from an established dealer of Old Master work and noticed they were on the same kind of paper.


Hebborn was murdered in Italy in 1996 and his killing remains unsolved. His deception was revealed in 1978 when a curator examined two drawings from an established dealer of old master work and noticed they were on the same kind of paper


A self-portrait by Hebborn, an etching touched with sepia wash (1984). Most of the Hebborn's work in the 1960s and 70s were original sketches made to resemble the style of historical artists rather than slightly altered copies of older work

Hebborn confessed to making forged work in 1984 but insisted he had done nothing wrong and blamed the art dealers for allowing themselves to be deceived.

He was murdered in Italy in 1996 and his killing remains unsolved.

During his lifetime Hebborn sold many of works to his landlord, to London galleries and through auctioneers.

These items are from the collection of Hebborn's last agent and include a drawing after a design by Michelangelo, The Rape of Ganymede, which has an estimate of £600.

A similar drawing sold last October for £2,200, over 18 times its estimate.

An oil painting in the style of Claude is expected to do particularly well, with an estimate of £3,500. Hebborn was known as a dealer in 16th century drawings so he didn't create many oil paintings.

THE MISCHIEVOUS MASTER FORGER WHO DUPED EXPERTS FOR DECADES

Almost 20 years after his brutal death, Hebborn's forgeries still hang in the grandest galleries and auction houses of the world.

In just 61 years, he is believed to have forged more than 1,000 paintings and drawings that were wrongly attributed to artists from van Dyck to Rubens.

He was born in South Kensington in 1934, and soon became recognised as an art prodigy, despite what he claimed was a violent upbringing. He claimed to have been beaten by his mother, and he later set fire to his school.

He went to the Royal Academy and the British School at Rome, where he won all the prizes but was looked down on an despised by his contemporaries,

When he was in his late 20s his own art was not selling and so he embarked on his forging career - as much to poke fun at the art establishment than to make money.

In 1963, he copied a Whistler, the 19th-century American painter. He then forged an engraving by Brueghel, the 16th-century Flemish painter.

He began to stock up on 16th-century paper and bought an 18th-century paintbox and embarked on producing a line of ‘Old Masters’.

He used glues prepared to special recipes, of which he had more than 20, and offered his works to dealers, pretending he had no idea the pieces were the 'works' of the painters he was imitating.

His forgeries were eventually rumbled by Konrad Oberhuber, curator of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Hebborn was a homosexual and lived in Italy with his lover Graham David Smith.

He was killed on a rainy evening in Rome in January 1996, after he had dropped in for a few glasses of wine at a bar, before he told the proprietor he was going on to dinner.

A few hours later, he was found with a severe head wound in Piazza Trilussa, near the River Tiber.

He was operated on at a nearby hospital, but died the following day.

A sketch in the style of Rembrant. Hebborn had 20 recipes for ink. He took extracts from several oak trees, and ground them to a fine powder with a mortar and pestle


A piece entitled 'etching of three women' in his own style. An etching touched with wash, 1984. Hebborn himself was said to have launched his forgery career as a joke at the expense of art world snobs, who looked down on him


A portrait of Peter Greenham in red chalk, who Hebborn got to know while he was a student at Royal Academy Schools between 1954 and 1959. Hebborn greatly respected Greenham as a teacher, describing him later as 'retiring, courteous and amiable'

As well as the 23 drawings and three oil paintings, Webbs auctioneers are also selling manuscripts and books Hebborn wrote on the art of forging.

These include his notes for a lecture he titled 'The Gentle Art of Deceiving.'

Auctioneer Justin Bygott-Webb said: 'This is the second biggest collection of Hebborn items we're selling.

'The first sale was whatever was left in his studio, this one is much more competent. It has all come from his former agent who has decided to put his collection on the market.

'The reason Hebborn is so infamous is because he sold huge numbers of these works to the respected London dealer Colnaghi, which sold them to galleries and museums.

'He was known as a dealer in 16th century drawings but he was a rogue who took advantage of the art market and the greatest forger of the 20th century.

'He won all the prizes at the Royal Academy but he was looked down on and despised by his contemporaries.

'There's a video of him talking about why he did it and basically he thought it was a joke to pull the wool over the eyes of the art experts.

'A particular interesting piece is a portrait of a young girl which is a forgery of Augustus John but it actually sold at Christie's as an original and has the auction house's mark on it to prove it.

'This is one of the drawings that duped the art world.

'We think the Claude oil painting should do well. He didn't do many oils because he was known for dealing in Old Master drawings. It is also referred to in one of his books.

'Some of the drawings he has signed, the hearsay goes that he signed his forgeries at a later date to ensure he didn't get into trouble.'

The whole collection is expected to sell for £10,000 on Wednesday.

[admin]

Wolfgang Beltracchi
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/29/22


Wolfgang Beltracchi
Born: Wolfgang Fischer, 4 February 1951 (age 71), Höxter, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Years active: 1965–2010
Known for: Art forger
Spouse: Helene Beltracchi ​(m. 1993)​

Wolfgang Beltracchi (born Wolfgang Fischer on 4 February 1951) is a German art forger and artist[1] who has admitted to forging hundreds of paintings in an international art scam netting millions of euros. Beltracchi, together with his wife Helene, sold forgeries of alleged works by famous artists, including Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Léger and Kees van Dongen. Though he was found guilty for forging 14 works of art that sold for a combined $45m (£28.6m), he claims to have faked "about 50" artists.[2] The total estimated profits Beltracchi made from his forgeries surpasses $100m.[3]

In 2011, after a 40-day trial, Beltracchi was found guilty and sentenced to six years in a German prison.[1][4][5][6][7][8] His wife, Helene, was given a four-year sentence, and both were ordered to pay millions in restitution. Beltracchi was freed on 9 January 2015, having served just over three years in prison.[9]

Biography

Wolfgang Fischer was born 4 February 1951 in Höxter, Germany[10][11] and grew up in Geilenkirchen, Germany. His father was an art restorer and muralist.

According to his own statements, Beltracchi first copied a Pablo Picasso painting when he was 14 years old. He was expelled from secondary school when he was 17 and later went to art school in Aachen. As a young man, he used drugs such a LSD and opium and started doing art forgeries "a little." He travelled through Europe and lived in Amsterdam and Morocco.[4]

He also lived in Mallorca, Spain and France.[1]

In the 1980s, Beltracchi ran an art gallery for a short time with a business partner. The two had a falling out, with the partner accusing Beltracchi of stealing paintings from his house, an accusation Beltracchi vehemently denies.[4]

Fischer met Helene Beltracchi in 1992 and, after marrying in 1993, adopted her surname.[4]

Beltracchi designed the artwork to The Fall of a Rebel Angel, the eighth studio album from German musical project Enigma. Since his release from prison, Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi have been living and working as artists on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.

Forgeries

Beltracchi did not copy existing and well known paintings, but painted his own paintings imitating the style of the artists in question. He made up the titles and motives, or claimed that a painting of his was a lost work that was only known by its title in old documents or catalogs.

He and his wife also established a false provenance for the works, claiming that Helene Beltracchi's grandfather—the wealthy industrialist Werner Jäger—had been friends with the German-Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim in the 1920s. They claimed that Flechtheim sold a cache works to Jägers before going into exile during the second world war. Many of the paintings that Wolfgang Beltracchi sold (forged by him) allegedly came from this collection.

There were several important holes in this story. For one, Jägers had been a member of the Nazi Party in the 1930s, making it unlikely that he would have befriended a Jewish dealer. But the story held enough weight for the Beltracchis to use it for many years.

When the credibility of the story was questioned, the Beltracchis delivered proof that the paintings had been in the family since the 1920s. They delivered old family photographs with Helene Beltracchi's grandmother in a room with the paintings in question in the background. Actually, the old looking photographs had been produced by Wolfgang Beltracchi himself; the woman on the photographs being Helene Beltracchi, dressed up as her own grandmother.[12] They also created fake labels proclaiming that the paintings were from the “Sammlung Flechtheim”—the Flechtheim Collection.[13]

Finally he was caught after having sold a work 'by' Heinrich Campendonk via Kunsthaus Lempertz. The painting was then sold to a company in Malta for €2.88 million. Beltracchi had used a paint tube produced in the Netherlands. The paint contained titanium white (which was not specified on the label), a pigment that had not been in use in Campendonk's times. As Beltracchi remembered, because he had not mixed his own paint this one time, the forgery was uncovered.[14][15]

Arrest and trial


The Beltracchis' erstwhile villa in Freiburg-Herdern.

Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi were arrested on 27 August 2010 in Freiburg.[4][16] Their accomplice Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus,[17] who helped place several of the forgeries in the market, was arrested on 1 December 2010.[18]

During the trial in autumn 2011, Beltracchi admitted forging 14 paintings: three by Heinrich Campendonk; two by André Derain; one by Kees van Dongen; five by Max Ernst; one by Fernand Léger; and two by Max Pechstein.[19][16] Beltracchi and his accomplices thank their relatively mild sentences to a deal with the parties involved. Originally the court had planned to hear more than 160 witnesses and ten experts. The prosecutor estimated that Beltracchi had made a profit of €16 million.[15]

On 27 October 2011, Beltracchi was sentenced to six years in jail. His wife Helene was sentenced to four years, and Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus to five years. Helene's sister Jeanette was given a 21-month suspended sentence.[20][21][22]

Aftermath

Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi were allowed to serve their sentences in an open prison, as long as they had regular jobs. They were employed by a friend's photostudio, leaving prison in the morning and returning after work.[4] While serving his sentence, Beltracchi, in collaboration with a photographer, produced a number of mixed-media works, including paintings embedding photographs of himself.[23] The collaboration ended in September 2012.[24] Helene Beltracchi was released from prison in February 2013.[25] Wolfgang Beltracchi was released from prison in January 2015. He agreed to paint only in his own name and to move from Germany to France.

On 23 February 2015, the CBS News program 60 Minutes[26] interviewed Wolfgang Beltracchi after his release from prison in Germany.[27]

In 2012, journalists Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm [de] published a book about the Beltracchi case.[28] Koldehoff and Timm were awarded the 2012 Annette Giacometti Prize for their work.[29]

In January 2014, Helene and Wolfgang Beltracchi published two books: an autobiography[30] and a collection of letters the pair wrote to each other while in prison.[31]

Beltracchi – Die Kunst der Fälschung (English: Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery),[32] a 2014 documentary about Beltracchi by German filmmaker Arne Birkenstock, won the 2014 German Film Award for Best Documentary Film.[33] Arne Birkenstock's father Reinhard Birkenstock is Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi's legal counsel.[34]

Beltracchi's forgeries embarrassed many art evaluation firms and numerous customers have sought legal remedy against the art specialists who mistakenly certified the artworks' authenticity.[35]

Burkhard Leismann, director of the Kunstmuseum Ahlen [de], was charged 19 February 2013 with being an accomplice in the attempted sale of a fake Fernand Léger painting titled Nature morte while knowing the painting to be fake. Leismann denied the charges.[36] The case was closed without going to trial, after Leismann signed a deal with German authorities in April 2014 and paid a €7500 fine. According to his lawyer, a trial would have proven Leismann's innocence, but he wanted the case to be closed quickly.[37]

A French tribunal ruled on 24 May 2013 that Werner Spies and gallery owner Jacques de La Béraudière were to pay an art collector €652,883. The collector had bought Tremblement de terre, a fake painting by Max Ernst, after Spies had declared it to be a genuine Max Ernst painting.[38] However, this decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal of Versailles which ruled that Spies had "expresse[d] an opinion outside of a determined transaction" and could not therefore "be charged with a responsibility equivalent to that of an expert consulted in the context of a sale”. The Court further held that it “cannot be required of the author of a catalogue raisonné to subject each work in a catalogue published under his responsibility to the execution of a scientific expert assessment, which requires the removal of fragments of the work and represents a significant cost”.[39]

A film The Art of Forgery was released in 2014.[40][41][42][43] The BBC reports that Wolfgang Beltracchi currently makes "millions" from selling his original works.[6][7][8][44][45]

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

2014: Der Jahrhundertfälscher. Galerie Christine Brügger, Bern

2015: FREIHEIT. art room9, München / Deutschland

2015: Im Dunkel der Wälder. Kurt Mühlenhaupt Museum, Bergsdorf

2016: Nabocov. Galerie Christine Brügger, Bern

2016: Free Method Painting. art room9, temporary Basel

2018: Kairos. Der Richtige Moment, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venedig

2018/2019: Kairos. Der Richtige Moment, Barlach Halle K, Hamburg

2019: Kairos. Der Richtige Moment, Bank Austria-Kunstforum Wien, Wien

2019: Bilder aus Kairos.DerRichtigeMoment Schloss Esterházy Lockenhaus, Burgenland

Group exhibitions

1978: Große Kunstausstellung. Haus der Kunst, München / Deutschland

2015: Mona, Galerie Kornfeld · 68 Projects. Berlin / Deutschland

Art projects

Art on ice. scenery by Wolfgang Beltracchi

Kairos. Der Richtige Moment

The Greats by Beltracchi

Forgeries

Police have identified 58 paintings they suspect were forged by Beltracchi. Beltracchi has claimed he has forged hundreds of paintings by more than 50 different artists.[1]

To provide a provenance for their fake works of art, Beltracchi and his associates fabricated stories about their grandparents who they claimed had been art collectors in the 1920s: the Sammlung Knops and Sammlung Werner Jägers. The Sammlung Knops (Knops Collection) had allegedly belonged to master tailor Johann Wilhelm Knops from Krefeld, grandfather of Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus; Sammlung Werner Jägers (Werner Jägers Collection) had allegedly belonged to Werner Jägers, Helene Beltracchi's grandfather.

Johann Wilhelm Knops and Werner Jägers were claimed to have been customers of Alfred Flechtheim. Many of the forgeries were labelled with his name.[20] While Knops and Jägers existed, they had not been important art collectors.[citation needed]

List of known forgeries

The Bundesverband Deutscher Kunstversteigerer (German Federation of Art Auctioneers), as a section of its database of known forgeries[46] has published a catalogue of works from the fictional Sammlung Jägers which have been investigated by the LKA. The catalogue lists 54 paintings as per October 2012, fakes presented as works by 24 different artists, including Heinrich Campendonk, Max Ernst, Auguste Herbin, Louis Marcoussis, André Derain, Jean Metzinger, Raoul Dufy, Kees van Dongen and Fernand Léger.[47]

Notable cases

Porträt Oskar Schlemmer by Johannes Molzahn



In 1987 Loretto Molzahn, widow of Johannes Molzahn, paid a Berlin dealer DM60,000 for a portrait her husband had painted in 1930 of Oskar Schlemmer. The dealer had acquired the painting from Wolfgang Fischer. The painting proved to be fake and the Berlin dealer was given a suspended sentence in 1998.[1][48]

Bouquet varié by Moïse Kisling



In 2012, Bouquet varié (mixed bouquet), purportedly a 1937 painting by Moïse Kisling, was listed by French auctioneers Millon to be auctioned in Dubai on 22 October 2012, with an estimate of $150,000–200,000. As its provenance were listed Sammlung Jägers, Köln, Sammlung Beltracchi, Palma, and an auction on 23 March 1994 at Sotheby's in London. The painting was withdrawn from auction when questions were raised about its authenticity. When asked about the painting, Beltracchi commented he "had painted many bouquets of flowers during his life".[49]

Research by Die Zeit revealed that two versions of the painting exist. The painting offered in Dubai had actually been sold by Sotheby's in 1993. The painting sold by Sotheby's in 1994 is different and its whereabouts are unknown.[50]

La Forêt (2) by Max Ernst



In 2004, Beltracchi and his associates sold La Forêt (2), a fake 1927 Max Ernst oil painting, after Werner Spies had appraised it and had issued a certificate of authenticity. He then put Wolfgang's wife Helene in touch with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, best known for the Bouvier Affair, who then sold the painting to investment firm Salomon Trading for €1.8 million ($2.3 million).[51]

Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière lent it to the Max Ernst Museum [de] for a 2006 exhibition and subsequently sold it to collector Daniel Filipacchi for $7 million.[52] The painting is now listed as a forgery from the Sammlung Jägers[47] and is one of the five Max Ernst paintings Beltracchi admitted to forging during the 2011 trial.[53]

Nature morte by Fernand Léger



In early 2006, Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus tried, unsuccessfully, to sell this painting via Parisian art dealers. Together with a forged André Derain painting, it was taken to Kunstmuseum Ahlen [de] in July 2009 where it was shown to prospective customers, including Christie's, which rejected it. Provenance of the painting was the fictional Sammlung Jägers. A deal was being negotiated to sell the painting for €5.8 million to an unknown buyer, when it was seized in the museum by police 25 August 2010.[18] It is one of the fourteen paintings Beltracchi admitted to forging.[54]

Landschaft mit Pferden by Heinrich Campendonk

In July 2004 Steve Martin paid Paris gallery Cazeau-Béraudière €700,000 for Landschaft mit Pferden (Landscape with horses), supposedly painted by Heinrich Campendonk in 1915. Not knowing it was fake, in February 2006 Martin sold the painting through Christie's to a Swiss businesswoman for €500,000.[55][56] The painting is now listed as a forgery from the Sammlung Jägers[47] and is one of the fourteen paintings Beltracchi admitted to forging.[57]

Rotes Bild mit Pferden by Heinrich Campendonk



In November 2006, Beltracchi and associates sold Rotes Bild mit Pferden (Red Picture with Horses), supposedly a 1914 painting by Heinrich Campendonk, to Trasteco, a Maltese company, for €2.88 million through Lempertz auctioneers in Cologne. "Rotes Bild mit Pferden" was found to be fake by Artvera's gallery, based in Switzerland.[58] In 2008, a scientific analysis showed the painting contained titanium white, which was not yet available in 1914. Experts identified old gallery labels on the back of the painting as fake.[4] The painting is now listed as a forgery from the Sammlung Jägers[47] and is one of the fourteen paintings Beltracchi admitted to forging.[59]

Trasteco sued for damages, and 28 September 2012 a court in Cologne ruled in its favor: Lempertz was to reimburse Trasteco the full amount. Lempertz announced it would appeal.[60]

In December 2012, the case was settled, with some of Beltracchi's real estate being sold to repay Trasteco €2 million. Lempertz reimbursed Trasteco its €800,000 sales commission as well as some additional costs. This is the first instance of Beltracchi's refunding a buyer of one of his forgeries.[61]

References

1. Hammer, Joshua (10 October 2012). "The Greatest Fake-Art Scam in History?". Vanity Fair. Condé Nast Publications. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
2. "Convicted forger claims he faked 'about 50' artists". BBC News. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
3. "Authentication in Art List of Unmasked Forgers".
4. Gorris, Lothar; Röbel, Sven (9 March 2012). "Confessions of a Genius Art Forger". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
5. "Wolfgang Beltracchi: portrait of the artist as a conman". YouTube. 16 April 2014. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
6. McCamley, Frankie (10 May 2015). "BBC Arts – Art Forger freed and making millions". BBC. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
7. "How Beltracchi, the world′s most famous art forger, plays with the market | Arts | DW.COM | 19.08.2015". DW.COM. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
8. "A Not-Quite-Great Documentary About the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time". Hyperallergic.com. 21 August 2015. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
9. "Master Forger Wolfgang Beltracchi Released from Prison – artnet News". News.artnet.com. 19 January 2015. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
10. "Keiner will's gewesen sein". 22 September 2011. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
11. "Vorläufige Sicherungsmaßnahmen".117 Js 407/10 and 110 KLs 17/11 (search for "Wolfgang Beltracchi")
12. Frickel, Claudia (8 May 2015). "Wolfgang Beltracchi: Porträt des genialen Kunstfälschers". Web.de. Retrieved 23 October 2021.
13. Critique, Art (24 January 2020). "The Long Game: how Wolfgang Beltracchi conned the art world". Art Critique. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
14. "Beltracchi fälschte Bilder von mehr als 50 Künstlern". Spiegel Online. 4 March 2012.
15. "Kunstfälscher muss sechs Jahre in Haft". Der Spiegel. 27 October 2011.
16. "Escroquerie : les Beltracchi, les "Bonnie and Clyde" de l'art". RTL.fr (in French). Retrieved 16 October 2020.
17. Gómez, Juan (13 November 2011). "La mejor colección de arte (Falso) moderno de Europa". El País.
18. Koldehoff, Stefan; Timm, Tobias (21 November 2011). "Wer kennt diese Bilder?". Die Zeit. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
19. Falsche Bilder Echtes Geld: pp. 243–270
20. "Art Forger All Smiles After Guilty Plea Seals Deal". Der Spiegel. 27 October 2011. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
21. "Wie erwartet: Kunstfälscher Beltracchi muss sechs Jahre in Haft". Express. 27 October 2011. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
22. "Un falsificador de los de antes | Cultura | elmundo.es".
23. "Selbstverliebte Souvenirs eines großen Betrügers". Süddeutsche Zeitung. 4 March 2012. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
24. According to the project's website: "The 'Project Beltracchi' are photographic works by Manfred Esser, painted over by Wolfgang Beltracchi...The collaboration ended on 01.09.2012" "Beltracchi Project". Retrieved 17 October 2012.
25. "Kunstfälscher Beltracchi war weltweit aktiv – Kultur-News – Süddeutsche.de". 16 January 2014.
26. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Wolfgang Beltracchi. YouTube.
27. "The Con Artist: A multimillion dollar art scam". CBS News.
28. Falsche Bilder Echtes Geld
29. "Fondation Giacometti – Grants and Prizes – The laureates". Fondation-giacometti.fr. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
30. Selbstporträt
31. Einschluss mit Engeln
32. Beltracchi – The Art of Forgery at IMDb
33. "Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 May 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
34. "Kunstfälscher Beltracchi lehnt geplante Filmkomödie ab". Focus. 3 July 2012. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
35. Bob Simon (23 February 2014). "Art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi's multimillion dollar scam". CBS News. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
36. Röbel, Sven (7 March 2013). "Beltracchi-Fälschungen: Anklage gegen Museumsdirektor erhoben". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
37. Fricke, Christiane (11 April 2014). "Burkhard Leismann: Glimpfliches Ende für Ahlener Museumsdirektor". Handelsblatt. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
38. "L'historien d'art Werner Spies condamné pour avoir mal authentifié une toile de Max Ernst". Le Monde.fr. 27 May 2013. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
39. "Judgment against Max Ernst expert Werner Spies overturned in appeal". theartnewspaper.com. Archived from the original on 25 October 2016.
40. "'Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery' ('Beltracchi: Die Kunst der Falschung'): Montreal Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Prometheus Global Media. 29 August 2014. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
41. "Global Screen". Globalscreen.de. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
42. "Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery (2014)". Blu-ray.com. 19 August 2015. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
43. "Beltracchi – The Art of Forgery, Subtitled Trailer | German Currents 2014". YouTube. 1 October 2014. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
44. "Wolfgang Beltracchi and the Biggest Art Scandal | Guardian Liberty Voice". Guardianlv.com. 23 February 2014. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
45. Cheng, Susan (3 March 2014). "Meet Wolfgang Beltracchi, the World's Greatest Art Forger". Complex.com. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
46. "A project against Art Forgery on the German Art Market" (PDF). kunstversteigerer. 2 May 2014. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
47. "Bundesverband Deutscher Kunstversteigerer" (PDF). Retrieved 2 October 2012.[dead link]
48. Wiegelmann, Lucas (27 October 2011). "Kurzer Prozess". Die Welt. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
49. Röbel, Sven (10 October 2012). "Beltracchi-Bild im Wüstensand". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
50. Koldehoff, Stefan; Timm, Tobias (25 October 2012). "Oh, wie schön ist Panama". Die Zeit. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
51. Critique, Art (24 January 2020). "The Long Game: how Wolfgang Beltracchi conned the art world". Art Critique. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
52. "The $7 Million Fake: Forgery Scandal Embarrasses International Art World". Der Spiegel. 13 June 2011.
53. Falsche Bilder Echtes Geld: p. 254
54. Falsche Bilder Echtes Geld: p. 259
55. "Steve Martin Swindled: German Art Forgery Scandal Reaches Hollywood". Der Spiegel. 30 May 2011.
56. "Steve Martin victim of German art forgery gang". The Guardian. 1 June 2011. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
57. Falsche Bilder Echtes Geld: p. 247
58. "Cologne-based auction house Lempertz charged in sale of false Campendonk painting". ArtDaily. 6 October 2012.
59. Falsche Bilder Echtes Geld: p. 248
60. "Lempertz to Appeal Court Decision for €2.9 Million Fine for Selling Forged Painting". 2 October 2012. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
61. "Schadensersatz : Kunstfälscher Beltracchi muss selbst zahlen". Der Spiegel. 10 December 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2013.

Sources

• Koldehoff, Stefan; Timm, Tobias (2012). Falsche Bilder Echtes Geld: Der Fälschungscoup des Jahrhunderts – und wer alles daran verdiente [False Pictures Real Money: The fake art coup of the century – and who made money from it] (in German) (1st ed.). Berlin: Galiani. ISBN 978-3-86971-057-0.
Translations:
o Koldehoff, Stefan; Timm, Tobias (2013). L'Affaire Beltracchi : Enquête sur l'un des plus grands scandales de faux tableaux du siècle et sur ceux qui en ont profité (in French). Jacqueline Chambon Editions. ISBN 978-2-330-01828-3.
• Beltracchi, Helene; Beltracchi, Wolfgang (2014). Selbstporträt (in German). Rowohlt. ISBN 978-3-498-06063-3.
• Beltracchi, Helene; Beltracchi, Wolfgang (2014). Einschluss mit Engeln: Gefängnisbriefe vom 31.8.2010 bis 27.10.2011 (in German). Rowohlt. ISBN 978-3-498-04498-5.

External links

• Homepage Wolfgang Beltracchi
• Beltracchi Project

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Masterful fakes: The paintings of Wolfgang Beltracchi
CBS News
August 3, 2014 / 6:30 PM

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Le Cycliste


CBS NEWS

Art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi's paintings have brought him millions of dollars in a career that spanned decades.

His paintings made their way into museums, galleries, and private collections worldwide, but as Bob Simon reports this week on 60 Minutes, all of his paintings are fakes.

Beltracchi's forgeries are unusual because he didn't copy existing paintings. Instead he created new works he imagined artists might have painted as well as works that were lost or missing from catalogs.

The forgery to the left was created by Beltracchi in the style of French painter Jean Metzinger.

Madchen mit Schwan


CBS NEWS

In a sense, every Beltracchi painting is an original. But he lied about who painted them in a scam that eventually led him to a six-year prison sentence and lawsuits totaling $27 million.

He estimates that he has forged a hundred artists and can imitate just about anyone. The following slides showcase his range.

The forgery to the left was created in the style of Dutch painter Henrich Campendonk.

Kleines kubistiches Stilleben


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Louis Marcoussis.

Bouquet de fleurs


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Moise Kisling.

Collioure


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of French artist Andre Derain.

Seine Paris


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Max Pechstein.

Rotes Bild mit Pferden


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Dutch painter Heinrich Campendonk.

Kleine weiße Landschaft


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of German surrealist Max Ernst and sold for $7 million.

Kubistisches Stilleben


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Fernand Leger.

Frauenakt


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Max Pechstein.

La Horde


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Max Ernst.

Cycliste (oval)


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Jean Metzinger.

Portrait d' Alfred Fletchtheim


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Louis Marcoussis.

Boote in Collioure


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Andre Derain.

La Mer


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Max Ernst.

Herbstwald


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Heinrich Nauen.

Zwei Figuren in Landschaft


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Heinrich Campendonk.

Kubistiches Frauenbild


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Jean Metzinger.

Guitare le compotier (Le Journal)


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Georges Braque.

River epte, Giverny


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Theodore Karl Butler.

Portrait Alfred Flechtheim


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Marie Laurencin.

Bouquet Varie


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Moise Kisling.

Maternité


CBS NEWS

This forgery was created in the style of Auguste Herbin.


**************************
Wolfgang Beltracchi, the greatest art forger
Dec 13, 2021

Journalists from around the world are gathered in Köln's courthouse for the end of the trial of Wolfgang Beltracchi for art forgery. Originally from a family of painters and art restorers, he decided to use the skills he had learn from his father to make a bit of extra cash, copying the work of great masters. Rather than working on his own art, he realised he could make money quickly by imitating those who were already famous.

[admin]

Meet Ken Perenyi, Master Art Forger
Jul 26, 2012

"There's just something that makes a great painting great. It is that last ten percent."

For thirty years, Ken Perenyi's forged paintings passed through the best auction houses and galleries in New York and London as original works. 'Caveat Emptor' is the remarkable story of how a self-taught artist, who first picked up a paintbrush in his teens, became America's most accomplished art forger.

Here, he talks about his years spent imitating the great art masters and about how his life changed the day two FBI agents showed up at his door.





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Master forger comes clean about tricks that fooled art world for four decades: Ken Perenyi's memoir reveals how natural cracks and discoloured varnish would deceive even seasoned experts
by Dalya Alberge
The Guardian
Sat 7 Jul 2012 08.13 EDT


Ken Perenyi at his home in Madeira Beach, Florida. Photograph: James Borchuck/Tampa Bay Times

An extraordinary memoir is to reveal how a gifted artist managed to forge his way to riches by conning high-profile auctioneers, dealers and collectors over four decades.

The book, Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger, will be published next month and tells the story of Ken Perenyi, an American who lived in London for 30 years. The revelations within it are likely to spark embarrassment on both sides of the Atlantic.

Perenyi's specialities included British sporting and marine paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries. He concentrated on the work of well-known but second-rank artists, believing that the output of the greatest masters is too fully documented. Dealers were often told he had found a picture in a relative's attic or spotted it in a car boot sale.

Perhaps Perenyi's proudest moment came when a forgery of Ruby Throats with Apple Blossoms, by the American 19th-century artist Martin Johnson Heade, made the front page of a national newspaper and was heralded as a major "discovery". It later fetched nearly $100,000 at auction in New York.

Claiborne Hancock, of Pegasus Books, describes the revelations in Caveat Emptor as "a bombshell for the major international auction houses and galleries".

Perenyi believes he is free finally to publish his story because, although he was investigated by the FBI, the case was closed in 2003 and is subject to the statute of limitations. He said he has never discovered why the case was dropped, but he suspects the art world may have been keen to prevent the exposure of the serial forgeries.

Born in New Jersey 63 years ago to a factory machinist, Perenyi is a self-taught artist who painted his first pictures as a teenager, discovering a natural talent for "the aesthetic and technical aspects of the old masters".

He recalled at first "trying to become a legitimate… artist" [but] every time I needed supplies or food, I would make a fake and sell it… I started to rely on fakery more and more. I eventually turned it into a full-blown career."

Explaining why he kept away from famous artists, Perenyi said: "I wouldn't want to fake a George Stubbs, as paintings… like that are usually… accounted for. However, you take an artist like John F Herring or Thomas Buttersworth and there could always be another one… in somebody's attic."

Sometimes he painted "in the style" of an artist, sometimes as "British School, 19th century". By rotating the auctioneers and dealers and also going to regional ones in the UK and US, he "could keep under the radar", he said.

Asked whether the experts should have detected the fakes, he said: "I pride myself on my forensic expertise. I started with extensive research… the correct canvas, correct stretchers… framed in good period antique frames. I made sure that… the back side spoke to [experts], that it gave them 'a history'. I had fake stamps, chalk marks, old inventory labels."

Salt water created rust and he found that canvas weaves from India and China had the irregularities of cloth used by 18th-century artists.

Not all of Perenyi's efforts passed muster. Two fakes are featured in a section on forgeries in a scholarly book on Heade. But elsewhere in the book two more appear as genuine paintings.

His love of painting and the old masters remains undimmed and today he owns a studio in Madeira Beach, Florida. Asked if he regrets not finding recognition as an artist in his own right, he said: "I've often pondered that myself. But to have equalled the hand of such artists as Herring and Buttersworth and many others is for me a tremendous satisfaction."

It now seems Perenyi's exploits will be celebrated in the cinema. Oscar-winning director Ron Howard has just snapped up the rights to his life story.

[admin]

Art forgeries
by David Morgan
by CBS News
SEPTEMBER 8, 2013 / 9:06 AM


ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

"Christ and Disciples of Emmaus" by Han van Meegeren.

A visitor at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam examines the painting "Christ and Disciples of Emmaus" by the noted art forger Han van Meegeren. The museum staged an exhibit titled "Van Meegeren's Fake Vermeers," showcasing the forger's works in the style of the Dutch master.

Van Meegeren (1889-1947) was one of history's most notorious art forgers. He was arrested for having sold a Vermeer to Hermann Goering during World War II, though actually the Vermeer was a fake he'd created. (Punk'd Nazi!) However, after the war Van Meegeren faced charges of being a Nazi collaborator, and while in prison had to prove he'd forged the painting by creating another Vermeer.


RIJKSMUSEUM

At left: Vermeer's "Woman in Blue Reading a Letter" (1666-1664).

Right: "Woman Reading Music" by Han van Meegeren, 1935-1936.


LEON NEAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A fraudulent relief sculpture, allegedly from the 8th-6th century BC, by art forger Shaun Greenhalgh is displayed at an exhibition of recovered forged art at the Victoria & Albert Museum in west London, January 22, 2010. Greenhalgh, along with his parents and brothers, operated what was referred to as "the garden shed gang" in Bolton, England, creating numerous fake art objects and antiquities.


TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A clerk holds an original "netsuke" (right) made of boxwood and its fake (left) at a gallery in Tokyo. "Netsuke" -- miniature sculptures made of ivory, boxwood or animal horn that Japanese men have traditionally worn to decorate their kimono belts -- have become a target of counterfeit artists in Hong Kong and China.


VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM

This example of medieval Iranian pottery decorated with a horseman appeared to date from the end of the 12th century, and was considered a fine example of lustre ware, in which metallic pigments are laid onto the surface of the glaze. However, when the pottery was recently cleaned it was discovered the plate's overpainting masked that it was made up of many shards, or fragments, of more than one 12th century pottery piece that do not join together. Such reconfigurations of genuine pottery are common given the rarity of unbroken pottery found at archeological sites.


UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Mark Landis was a noted forger who produced hundreds of paintings in the style of Bourgereau (left), Picasso, Watteau, Charles Courtney Curran, and even Walt Disney, which he then donated to museums and galleries -- sometimes disguised as a Jesuit priest. At right, the same painting under an ultraviolet light reveals the fakery.



The Hungarian forger Elmyr de Hory sold works purportedly created by Modigliani (left), Picasso, Chagall, Toulouse-Lautrec, Dufy, Matisse, Degas and Renoir. He claimed the paintings has been acquired by his family after World War II.

His story was told in the 1969 book "Fake!" by Clifford Irving, who himself was later revealed to have penned a fake autobiography of the tycoon Howard Hughes.


Exhibit DD/8
METROPOLITAN POLICE

In May 2012 William Mumford, a Littlehampton, England chef at a neighborhood pub, was sentenced to prison for two years for art fraud, having painted up to a thousand forged artworks mimicking such artists as Sayed Haider Raza, Francis Newton Souza, Jilali Gharbaoui, Sadanand Bakre, Maqbool Fida Husain, Kyffin Williams, and John Tunnard.

His co-conspirators helped create false provenances and sold the works on eBay and to galleries and collectors. Detectives located 40 of his paintings which were sold -- some for as much as 30,000 pounds -- but there are potentially hundreds more fake paintings believed to be in circulation.

Left: One of Mumford's paintings purporting to be one by Sadanand Bakre.

"These paintings, listed as 'unknown,' came with elaborate false provenance that drew buyers into bidding for the items," said Detective Constable Michelle Roycroft. "This, together with William Mumford's execution of the paintings and the attention to detail -- using forged gallery stamps and genuine Victorian paper to make labels -- fooled hundreds of people both in the U.K. and worldwide with victims in France, U.S.A. and Canada. We would urge people to exercise extreme caution when purchasing any work of art from online auction sites and always remember - 'If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.'"


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Prolific art forger Ken Perenyi, pictured in 1989 with his rendition of an animal scene by 19th century Dutch painter Melchior d'Hondecoeter.

Over the course of three decades Perenyi painted thousands of works in the style of European and American painters such as Charles Bird King, Martin Johnson Heade, Gilbert Stuart and James E. Buttersworth. Often he would show up at an art dealer with a work in tow, blithely ignorant of the artist, and leave it up to the dealer to determine he had found a previously unknown Thomas Whitcombe or John Nost Sartorious.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Ken Perenyi working on sculpture restoration at his Florida studio in 1978.

After studying art in New Jersey, Perenyi and his friends were inspired by the experience of the forger Han van Meegeren. Studying a book of his life and his forgery techniques, Perenyi began copying Dutch masters, and found uncritical buyers.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

One of Perenyi's biggest sellers were his paintings in the style of 19th century maritime artist James E. Buttersworth.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Perenyi took pains to acquire contemporaneous paintings of little value so that he could strip the paint and use the authentic period canvases and frames. He resurfaced the canvas with gesso, then produced a new image on the genuine period material.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Perenyi aged the artwork through a baking process, to produce the characteristic cracking of the paint.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Ken Perenyi's version of a Thomas Whitcombe.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

This Charles Brooking sea battle was actually painted by Ken Perenyi, 232 years after the English artist died.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

A help to Perenyi's forgery schemes was the tendency of some artists to reproduce copies of their own work. Robert John Curtis (1816-1877) had painted the Seminole leader Osceola, then offered copies of his original painting for sale.

Perenyi made a copy of the Curtis portrait, which he brought to a Washington, D.C., auction house. It later sold on consignment for $86,250.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

A sample of the catalogs featuring paintings actually created by Ken Perenyi, though attributed to countless other artists.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Hummingbirds by Perenyi, after Martin Johnson Heade's "Gems of Brazil." Perenyi had read a biography of the artist who traveled to South America in 1863, and noticed that several of Heade's works had been "discovered in England." So why not a couple more?

In 1992 he brought his forgery to an appraiser at Christie's, claiming to be a tourist who purchased it for two pounds at a "boot sale," but unsure what it was. The auction house declared it was a Heade.


NEW YORK POST

Christie's put the "Heade" painting, dubbed "Ruby Throats With Apple Blossoms," on the auction block, where it sold for $96,000.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Ken Perenyi's c. 1978 rendition of a still life by American artist John F. Peto (1854-1907).


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

A Perenyi after William A. Walker (1839-1921), who often painted scenes of black sharecroppers.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

A Ken Perenyi after James Seymour.


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Although Perenyi had some close calls in FBI investigations of art fraud, he could never be traced to any conspiracy to sell phony artwork . . . that is, until a woman to whom he had gifted a fake Buttersworth took the painting on consignment to a U.K. auction house. It was advertised on the postcard at left, and soon discovered to be an exact duplicate of another (fake!) Buttersworth that had recently sold.

But Perenyi had time on his side -- the statute of limitations ran out before an FBI investigation into his activities could be completed. And today he continues to sell his "reproductions" (now explicitly advertised as such).


KEN PERENYI/PEGASUS BOOKS

Ken Perenyi's version of a Gilbert Stuart.

For more info: "Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger" by Ken Perenyi (Pegasus Books)
kenperenyi.com

[admin]

Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art
directed by Barry Avrich
Documentary Trailer Now on Netflix
Feb 23, 2021



Filmmaker Barry Avrich (David Foster: Off the Record, Prosecuting Evil) explores how one of the most respected art galleries in New York City became the center of the largest art fraud in American history and was ultimately forced to close after 165 years. Knoedler & Company, under its president, Ann Freedman, made millions selling previously unseen works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and others that had supposedly come from a secret collection. But when her prestigious clients discovered they had purchased fakes, the scandal rocked the art world. Avrich secured unprecedented access to Freedman, her clients and other key players for the documentary.

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Pei-Shen Qian Now: Where Is the Accused Knoedler Gallery Art Forger Today in 2021?
by Alyssa Choiniere
heavy.com
Updated Feb 26, 2021 at 9:57am

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Pei-Shen Qian was accused of forging art by famous artists including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Pei-Shen Qian was a struggling Times Square artist when he was approached by Jose Carlos in the late 1980s, asking him if he could replicate Jackson Pollock. He said he could, and soon found himself at the center of an $80.7 million art scandal.

Qian was indicted, but moved back to China where he remains today and escaped prosecution. In 2014, he was indicted on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and lying to the FBI, according to his indictment. He was 75 at the time of his indictment. He could face up to 45 years in prison if he was convicted of the charges. Now in his early 80s, he continues to paint in a small studio outside Shanghai, but no longer sells his art, his wife told documentary filmmakers.

Qian was one of the multifaceted characters at the center of Director Barry Avrich’s “Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art.” It’s release was delayed due to COVID-19 and it was released on Netflix Tuesday, February 23, 2021.

Here’s what you need to know:

Qian Claims He Had No Plans to Con Anyone & Did Not Make Significant Money in the Art Fraud Scheme

Elizabeth Klinck
@eklinck·Follow
Good Review: 'Made You Look: A True Story about Fake Art,' a fascinating $80 million con....proud to have worked on this one with a terrific team ! Now on @Netflix @melbarentgroup #documentary
latimes.com
Review: 'Made You Look: A True Story about Fake Art,' a fascinating $80 million con
The Netflix documentary “Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art” depicts those involved in the largest art fraud in American history.
9:21 PM · Feb 23, 2021

In China, Qian was a successful and classically trained artist and a professor. In the United States, he tried to make ends meet painting on Manhattan street corners and through construction work. He thoroughly studied the works of famous artists in art class and beyond. His friend, Hongtu Zhang, told filmmakers on “Made You Look” that replicating famous works of art is a common practice in Chinese art.

“Nothing from your heart. You only copy others art,” he said.

“He is good. He had some talent,” he added.

Qian claimed innocence in a December 2013 interview with Bloomberg News in Shanghai, China. He said he was an innocent victim of a “very big misunderstanding” and had no intention to pass off his imitations for genuine works of art by famous painters.

“I made a knife to cut fruit,” he said at the time. “But if others use it to kill, blaming me is unfair.”

Prosecutors said in his charging documents that Qian was aware of the scheme, and participated in it with art dealers Jose Carlos and Jesus Angel Bergantinos Diaz, who were brothers, and Diaz’s girlfriend at the time, Glafira Rosales. The indictment said he would use processes to age the paintings such as dyeing them with tea bags, using a blow dryer on them or exposing them to the elements. It further said he would forge the signatures of famous artists on the canvases.

Qian was initially paid a few hundred dollars for each painting, but after learning his paintings were selling for much more, he demanded a higher price and received about $7,000 per painting.

Qian Is Now Laying Low in Shanghai, Avoiding Media Attention & Continues to Paint in a Small Studio But No Longer Sells His Art



“Made You Look” filmmakers tracked down Qian in China. He had aged and walked with a cane. He identified himself, but was not interviewed on film.

His wife politely declined an interview.

“He is old now. He doesn’t want to be interviewed,” she said in a translation. “He is painting for himself and not selling his art anymore.”

Qian moved to a neighborhood outside Shanghai and opened a small art studio. There, he spoke to ABC News in 2014 and said he was not a knowing participant in the fraud scheme.

“My intent wasn’t for my fake paintings to be sold as the real thing,” he said in a translated interview. “They were just copies that can be put up in your home if you like it.”

Dr. Colette Loll
@ArtFraudInsight·Follow
Made You Look, a documentary about the Knoedler scandal is now available on Netflix! I am incredibly amused to see the film producers have used an image of me taken with a fake Knoedler Rothko as a film promo #RealorFake
7:33 AM · Feb 24, 2021

He further pointed to his small fee received for paintings that often sold for millions of dollars apiece.

“If you look at my bank account, you’ll see there’s no income. I’m still a poor artist. You think I could be involved with this?” he said.

“These copies were just supposed to mimic them at a basic level, so I was very shocked that people mixed them up,” he said.

The Guardian reported shortly after Qian’s indictment in 2014 there was little chance of extraditing him from China to face prosecution. He has dual citizenship in both China and the United States.

“There is almost no chance that China would turn their own citizen over,” Professor Julian Ku, an expert on China and international law at Hofstra University, told The Guardian. “They generally don’t have a policy of co-operating, and don’t have any reason to turn anyone over, because the US won’t turn anyone over to China.”

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What Puts Soul in a Masterpiece?
by Ken Johnson
The New York Times
Dec. 30, 2013

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

A painting by Pei-Shen Qian shown in a 2006 retrospective in China. Credit...BB Gallery, Shanghai

Recently, The Art Newspaper reported that Pei-Shen Qian had some of his paintings included in a group exhibition in a Shanghai gallery last spring. Scandal-following readers will recognize the name as that of a Chinese artist, once living in Queens, whose imitations of paintings by Pollock, de Kooning and other Abstract Expressionists were sold as real for millions of dollars by the New York gallery Knoedler & Company, now defunct.

In China, where he regularly returned for extended visits after moving to New York in 1981, Mr. Qian, 73, is known for his own paintings. He first emerged as an artist in the late 1970s, one of a group producing and exhibiting abstract work, which Cultural Revolution authorities deemed bourgeois and decadent. In 2006, he had a 25-year retrospective at the BB Gallery in Shanghai. Some of his works are posted on various websites. Naturally, you wonder, are Mr. Qian’s own paintings any good? Would I like to review them, my editor asked?

I can’t, in good conscience, review works I’m able to see only online. But I can say, provisionally, that I’m struck by the absence of any singular vision among his pieces. My laptop screen shows earnestly made, colorful landscapes and cityscapes that evoke early Post-Impressionist paintings by Matisse and André Derain. Some mixed-media works represent faceless women in a style that hybridizes classical Chinese painting and early-20th-century Cubism, made on what appear to be surfaces of patched-together burlap.

A picture of a horse including stenciled white letters spelling “This is not a horse” echoes Magritte’s painting of a pipe captioned “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). Several paintings are of large, generalized heads rendered in a soupy, Expressionist manner.


Personal works by Pei-Shen Qian were shown at the BB Gallery in Shanghai in 2006 as part of a 25-year retrospective of his artistic career. Pictured is an example from that show. Credit...BB Gallery, Shanghai

Nostalgia seems to be the unifying mood of Mr. Qian’s paintings. That, alone, is remarkable, because the European works that evidently inspired him were revolutionary in their time. The kind of painting he emulates in his own work and the Abstract Expressionist paintings on which he has based his imitations both depended on originality and expressive authenticity, as opposed to academic tradition and technical polish. Yet Mr. Qian seems to be the opposite of original.

I suppose he works in styles he loves without worrying about whether they’re outmoded. Unless there’s something going on that can’t be seen in online images, it seems unlikely that Mr. Qian’s personal paintings will cause anything like the stir his imitations have.

That is disappointing but not surprising. I like the fantasy of the unjustly neglected genius who gets revenge on the art world by making expert-fooling works that mimic the style of famous painters. (Mr. Qian has not been charged with any crime related to the scandal.) But I think it more likely that the typical copyist will be relatively lacking in originality. Copyists need to be able to muffle their own creative selves, and if those creative selves are weak, all the better.

What they need in abundance are technical knowledge and skill. It’s not easy to make forgeries. However hard it was for Barnett Newman to produce one of his zip paintings, making a convincing fake Newman — reverse-engineering it, in effect, as well as making it look appropriately aged — surely will be more demanding technically, if not spiritually.


A painting by Pei-Shen Qian. Credit...BB Gallery, Shanghai

Mr. Qian’s creations, which were not copies of actual works but in the style of famous artists, intrigue me more than his personal work, but not for technical reasons. They raise interesting philosophical questions: Why should we value a painting known to be made by a certain esteemed artist more than a painting that is phony but is nevertheless practically indistinguishable from the authentic work? Why is a real Motherwell worth millions of dollars more than a fake one that looks just as good?

The dynamics of supply and demand are what make any artwork worth its price. Real things are worth more than fake ones simply because they are more rare.

Demand is more fluid and variable than supply because it’s influenced by vagaries of taste and fashion; it’s less rational. Demand is partly animated by some quasi-magical beliefs about art and artists, like the idea that there’s a sort of organic connection between artists and the things they make. The artist’s soul is somehow in the work, and because great artists are supposed to have great souls, there’s more soul in their creations than there is in mediocre efforts.

From there, it’s a short leap of faith to the belief that market valuation reflects soul value — not perfectly, but at least roughly and in the long term. The most expensive works have the most soul. That’s why, if you can afford it, you buy the real Motherwell. There’s no magic, no soul, in fake artworks, so they are worth less, if not completely worthless.


A work by Pei-Shen Qian. Credit...BB Gallery, Shanghai

Mr. Qian told Bloomberg Businessweek that he thought he was being commissioned to make paintings for art lovers who could not afford the genuine works but were willing to buy imitations. I don’t know if such people really exist, but Mr. Qian seems to have thought they did. He didn’t imagine that there was anything ethically or legally wrong with what he was doing. He was a copyist but not a forger, if intention to deceive is part of the definition of a forger.

Mr. Qian told a reporter that he was shocked to learn what art dealers actually did with his simulations, for which they paid him a few thousand dollars per piece. He also said that he thought that it was impossible to make fakes that would be undetectable as such. Apparently, he didn’t even try: Signs of age and forged signatures, prosecutors say, were added by the man who ordered the paintings, the art dealer Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz.

The art market depends on the belief, expressed by Mr. Qian, that fakes can always be detected. Collective wisdom supposes that the forgery must, at some level, betray itself, and much connoisseurial scrutiny and forensic investigation goes into ensuring that as many deceptions as possible are ultimately exposed. Forgeries flooding the market unchecked would throw relations between supply and demand out of whack, causing economic chaos.

That’s what makes stories like that of Mr. Qian and the people he worked for so compelling. They are players in contemporary morality tales, myth-saturated chronicles about the upset and the restoration of order in the capitalist universe. It would make a more thrilling story if Mr. Qian turned out to be a great artist in his own right. Judging from what we can see online, however, that happy ending isn’t going to happen.

Wouldn’t it be great, however, if we could see an exhibition of all his fake paintings?

Correction: Jan. 2, 2014: A critic’s notebook article on Tuesday about Pei-Shen Qian, a Chinese artist whose imitations of paintings by Abstract Expressionists were sold as real for millions of dollars, referred incorrectly to him at several points. He is Mr. Qian, not Mr. Pei-Shen. (He has not been charged with any crime in connection with the case.)

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 31, 2013, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: What Puts Soul in a Masterpiece?

Inside the World of Forgery and Fake Art

• Archival detective work helped prove that “one of the great treasures” in the University of Michigan Library — a Galileo manuscript — is the work of a prolific early-20th-century forger.
• An art collector paid $90,000 for a Marc Chagall painting at a Sotheby’s auction in 1994. Now an expert panel in France wants to destroy it as a fake.
• For decades, the owner of a Manhattan gallery mass-produced objects that he passed off as ancient artifacts. Then he sold his fake antiquities to undercover federal investigators.
• What happens when a work of art is discredited? Experts say many have second lives that resemble their first, as they resurface on the market again and again.
• With high-tech instruments and the periodic table, a Sotheby’s “detective” digs deep to discover what’s real and what’s not.

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New York Art Con Busted
by Ana Bambic
Widewalls
May 2, 2014



After he was accused by the US authorities of having gained around $33million after forging artwork by such luminaries as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Pei-Shen Qian fled to his homeland, China, avoiding the anticipated imprisonment of 45 years. This Chinese painter was indicted on Monday, as the creative link in the wire deception organized by two brothers - gallerists from Spain, who sold the bogus works Qian was producing for enormous prices to American and European art collectors. Apparently, the trio had an elaborated scheme functioning for years, through which they accumulated an incredible wealth, at the expense of galleries and art aficionados they swindled.


Robert Motherwell, a work Qian allegedly forged

The International Art Swindle

Although the two Spanish gallerists, Jose Carlos and Jesus Angel Bergantinos Diaz, are arrested and waiting extradition to Spain, Pei-Shen Qian is likely to escape the American judicial system, since China is not likely to cooperate in extradition process. Glafira Rosales, an art dealer and a former girlfriend of one of the Diaz brothers, participated in the international scheme as well, helping the party place their forged pieces in Europe.


Wilem de Kooning - Excavation

Pei-Shen Qian: The Art Forger

In an interview of last year, Qian claimed he was the victim of the fraud as well, stating that even if he painted the works, he did not participate in the sales, which, according to him, is enough to have him exempted from the indictment. However, the case documentation clearly points he participated willingly in the entire con.

Qian was a painter in China, where he worked creating portraits of Mao Tse Tung for Chinese schools and offices. He came to the USA in 1981 as a student, and remained in the country. He lived in New York, and was “discovered” by Jose Carlos later in the 1980s while he was easel painting on a Manhattan street corner. He started making copies of Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat.

The Chinese foger was very active in the production of signed fakes in the early 1990s, painted on old canvases and with old paint, supplied by the gallerists, or staining newer canvases with tea bags to make them appear older. The range of artists Qian forged slowly expanded to Modernists and Abstract Expressionists.

At first, the fraudulent gallerists paid Qian several hundred dollars per painting, but soon he started demanding more money and in the late 2000s, he was receiving as much as $7,000 per painting, for regular “work”. When the more complex deceits against acclaimed New York galleries were planned, much higher sums, up to several million dollars per painting, were in question.



Justice for All?

The Bergantinos Diaz brothers and Rosales were all arrested, and Rosales pleaded guilty to nine criminal charges last September, facing up to 99 years of confinement.

Jose Carlos is facing around 114 years in prison, and his brother is looking at a sentence of as much as 80 years. Their illegally gained property was forfeited to the authorities, while their criminal careers were rightfully stopped. The only figure who seems to have escaped, perhaps permanently, is Pei-Shen Qian, due to China’s and the US unwillingness to cooperate on this (and similar) matter. Qian has dual citizenship and neither of the countries was ever known to handover their citizens to be persecuted abroad. He will not be able to travel to any countries with which the United States have signed the extradition treaty, which is the Americas, most of Europe and Hong Kong, but there is still a large chunk of the planet for this Chinese conman to move freely through.

In the light of the evidence offered against Qian and his collaborators, the true talent of this Chinese artist remains in the shadow. It’s a pity he never turned to original painting, which could have made him a respectable career.

It remains for the damaged to have faith in the US justice system, and for the rest of the bystanders to hope this kind of criminal behavior will come to some kind of just closure.

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A good question. Are paintings by Pollock, Malevich and Rothko that easy to fake?
by Natalya Azarenko
arthive.com
October 29, 2019

Paintings of the 20th century are truly a great temptation for fraudsters specializing in fake art. The canvases, frames and paints of the period are easier to find than those of the paintings by old masters. It is often technically easier to copy directly the image itself — due to the features of avant-garde styles. The question is, rather, if it is possible to sell the fake subsequently at the price of the original.


Cover illustration: Kazimir Severinovich Malevich. Composition, 1932

Good chance comes at once

Regarding the Russian avant-garde, this branch of painting has a rather deplorable status in the art market. On the one hand, the high demand for Soviet modernists among the Western public led to the fact that they began to be faked on an industrial scale. And due to the fact that no one carefully monitored provenance, that is, the direct history of the canvases moving from one hand to another, during the times of the USSR (due to the specifics of the then art market, or rather, its legal absence, it was impossible), the authentication is problematic. After all, it is impeccable provenance that traditionally plays a decisive role in the attribution of paintings in the West.

Since it wasn’t customary to officially record transactions for the sale of works of art in all of the USSR, in order to restore the history of a picture, one does not have to study archives, but contact relatives who could confirm or deny its authorship. However, even in such cases, it is difficult to accurately determine the authenticity of the work.


Composition. Nikolai Suetin. 1920-th , 65×48 cm

The architect Nina Suetina, the daughter of Nikolai Suetin, one of Malevich's colleagues in Suprematist experiments, recalled how she once had failed to establish the truth: "Now they sometimes come and bring me works: ‘Sign that this is Suetin.' They tell me absolutely ridiculous stories of these works, there are a lot of fakes. In America, they showed me one work with a signature; I looked at it — it seemed to be the authentic Suetin, and I signed the authentication, and then it turned out that it was a fake, so now I’m more careful."

Very often all that experts have in store to authenticate artworks is a flair of style. Having worked with the pieces by a particular artist for a long time (compiling catalogues or writing monographs), experts begin to see distinctive features that help to notice fakes: they understand whether the well-known to him/her artist could paint in such a manner or not.


Aristarkh Vasilyevich Lentulov. Portrait of Artist's Wife and Daughter, 1915


Ivan Vasilievich Kliun. Self-Portrait with Saw, 1914

It comes to funny things. So, in 2014, Italy hosted the exhibition "Russian Avant-Garde: from Cubo-Futurism to Suprematism", where, according to the organizers, the works by Malevich, Goncharova, Lentulov and Kliun from private collections, many of which have never been exhibited before, were presented. Russian experts, such as art critic Andrey Sarabyanov, one of the authors of the Encyclopedia of Russian Avant-Garde, and Tatyana Goryacheva from the Tretyakov Gallery questioned the authenticity of the paintings at the exhibition. And although the curators claimed that it was confirmed by the laboratories of the Polytechnic Institute of Milan, they delicately glossed over the origin of certain works.


Aristarkh Lentulov. Woman with Harmonica, 1913


Forest. Red-green. Natalia Goncharova. 1914

Natalia Goncharova is especially liked by forgers. In 2011, a catalogue raisonné of the Russian artist was published in France; according to Andrey Sarabyanov, more than 400 paintings claim the title of fakes. Whatever it be, there are so many fake works of Russian avant-garde that serious auction houses only accept paintings by Russian modernists if there is a strong provenance that leaves no doubt about their authenticity.


Cats. Natalia Goncharova. 1913, 85.1×85.7 cm

One Chagall, two Chagalls

Fraudsters don’t usually risk making copies of famous paintings, the location of which is well known — for sure, no one will take a direct offer to buy, say, the original "Black Square" for serious. But some run the risk of duplicating less known works, hoping that they would never hit the market from a private collection, and the copy would not be exposed.



That’s what Ely Sakhai, a US dealer, did. He made copies of the paintings he acquired and sold them to Japanese collectors, attaching a real certificate of authenticity to them. He hoped that the fakes would settle in the Far East and would never intersect with the original. So he bought the The Purple Tablecloth by Marc Chagall for 312 thousand dollars, sold its copy to a Japanese collector for more than half a million, and then got rid of the original by selling it several years later for 626 thousand dollars.

The businessman got burned with Gauguin. In 2000, Christie’s and Sotheby’s suddenly put up two same pictures of the Frenchman at the auction. One of them, the fake, was exhibited for sale by the Japanese client of Sakhai, and the second one, the original, was put up by Sakhai himself. So he came to the attention of the FBI with all the ensuing consequences: he returned 11 paintings to his fraud victims, paid 12.5 million dollars and spent several years in prison.

Made by Chinese

One of the most grandiose scams in the art world turned out to be lucky from 1994 to 2009 for the former art dealer Glafira Rosales. She managed to sell fake paintings by Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and other artists through the infamous Knoedler Gallery. When the truth surfaced, it led to the closure of the gallery and the arrest of the go-getter lady. However, by that time, she sold 31 works worth more than $ 80 million.

The real author of the works was the Chinese Pei-Shen Qian, who lived in New York. He copied the originals so skilfully that his paintings were borrowed for exhibitions by curators from the National Gallery of Art and the Guggenheim Museum. In their defence, we can only note that the Knoedler gallery at that time had a one and a half centuries history and an impeccable reputation, which contributed the possibility of such frauds.


Detail of the picture, which was said to be Jackson Pollock’s. Source: apnews.com

Auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, who refused to accept Pollock’s work in 2011, that had been acquired by a London collector Pierre Lagrange from the Knoedler gallery for $ 17 million, exposed the fake. The results of the examination showed that the pigments used in the painting did not exist at the time of Pollock. Pei-Shen Qian managed to escape to his home in China, but Glafira Rosales faced the trial.

There is another extravagant way to determine the authenticity of Pollock’s paintings or other pictures that have the properties of fractal painting. According to the research of the American scientist Richard Taylor, such a parameter as the coefficient of fractal dimension of a pattern can help to identify a fake with an accuracy of more than 90 percent.

The producers of fake masterpieces sometimes turn out to be so talented that their paintings occupy places in special exhibition halls intended for the best fakes, and individual museums are engaged in their collecting.

One of the works by Pei-Shen Qian, performed "à la Rothko", was honoured to open the exhibition "Treasures on Trial: The Art and Science of Detecting Fakes" at the Winterthur Museum (Delaware, USA). Thus, for some artists, the path to their 15 minutes of fame goes through deception.


Photo of the Pei-Shen Qian painting in the manner of Mark Rothko: winterthur.org

*************************

Knoedler case forger protests innocence in interview
by phaidon.com
July 21, 2014


A fake Jackson Pollock, painted by Pei-Shen Qian

Pei-Shen Qian tells ABC’s Nightline he was surprised anyone fell for his abstract expressionist forgeries

If you painted a canvas with dripped paint, signed it 'Jackson Pollok' rather than Pollock and received a few thousand dollars in return, are you guilty of forgery? The FBI certainly believe so, and charged septuagenarian Chinese-born artist Pei-Shen Qian with a number of offences relating to the abstract expressionist canvases Qian created, some of which were sold via the Knoedler gallery in New York.

Qian moved back to China just before the FBI’s charges were brought last April, and is unlikely to return to the US to face justice. However, he has just given this interview to ABC’s Nightline, wherein he protests his innocence.

The channel’s investigative team, headed by reporter Brian Ross, tracked the artist down to a suburb outside Shanghai, where Qian now lives. “My intent was not for paintings to be sold as the real thing,” he claims. “They were just copies to be put up in your home if you liked them.”


Pei-Shen Qian speaking to ABC's Nightline

Moreover, the painter thinks the sums he was paid – about $6000 per canvas - indicate that he was never part of a larger conspiracy to sell the works as genuine works, often for many millions of dollars. “Look at my bank account,” he says. “ I’m still a poor artist.”

Qian also tells the reporters that he was shocked that his versions of Pollock, Rothko and others ever fooled anyone. “These copies were supposed to mimic them on a very basic level,” he claims. “I was very surprised people mixed them up.”

The footage, shot in what looks like a modest Chinese apartment, doesn’t portray Qian as a masterful art criminal, but rather a minor player in a larger scandal, designed to pass off 60 or so works as paintings by 20th century artists including Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning.


One of Pei-Shen Qian's original works, Shanghai Landscape no. 4 (2000)

Qian was part of Shanghai’s avant-garde art scene in the 1970s before relocating to New York in an attempt to make it within the gallery system. Though he's returned to China, he continues to paint; however, Nightline notes, the artist no longer adds anyone else’s name to his canvases.

***

Accused Master Art Forger Tracked Down in Shanghai: U.S. says artist created fake Rothkos and Pollocks that fooled art experts.
by Megan Chuchmach and Brian Ross
ABC News
July 15, 2014, 7:28 AM

In his first television interview, the elderly artist whose look-alike paintings in the styles of Abstract Expressionists including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock fooled experts and sent shock waves through the art world claims he was ”shocked” to learn that his works were sold as newly discovered masterpieces to wealthy collectors for tens of millions of dollars.

“When I made these paintings, I had no idea they would represent them as the real thing to sell,” said Pei Shen Qian in an interview to be broadcast Tuesday on “World News With Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline” as part of an ABC News investigation of the fake art industry and the Long Island fraud ring that flooded the market with over $80 million in forged work.

Now under federal indictment in New York on charges of fraud, Qian has moved from his studio in the New York borough of Queens to a small apartment on the outskirts of Shanghai where ABC News found him.

“My intent wasn’t for my fake paintings to be sold as the real thing,” Qian said. “They were just copies to put up in your home if you like it.”

But according to the federal grand jury indictment, Qian created some 63 look-alike versions of the abstract work of Rothko and Pollock and others and lied to FBI agents about his role in the fraud.


Authorities said this is work, purportedly by Mark Rothko, is actually a fake, used in an art fraud ring.
Obtained by ABC News

The indictment charges that Qian claimed he was unfamiliar with the names of certain artists “whose names Qian had repeatedly and fraudulently signed on paintings Qian created.”

Federal authorities say Qian was recruited to create the paintings by a Long Island, New York couple who began the fraud scheme in the early 1990s. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, of the Southern District of New York, called the defendants “modern masters of forgery and deceit” and said they “tricked victims into paying more than $33 million for worthless paintings, which they fabricated in the names of world-famous artists.”

One of those charged, Glafira Rosales, pleaded guilty to fraud, tax and money laundering charges last year and is reported to be cooperating with authorities in the ongoing investigation.

Her boyfriend and alleged partner, Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, was arrested in Spain earlier this year on federal charges and the U.S. has asked for his extradition.

Authorities say Diaz discovered Qian’s talent as he painted on a Manhattan street corner in the early 1990s and began commissioning his works.

But Qian remains beyond the reach of American law because the U.S. has no extradition treaty with China.

When ABC News found him in Shanghai late last year, prior to the federal indictment, he said he was paid much less than the Long Island art dealers who hired him. They made millions off the paintings by telling galleries they represented a mystery man who had inherited a treasure trove of masterpieces and wished to remain anonymous. The indictment says Qian was often paid between $5,000 to $8,000 for a look-alike work.

“If you look at my bank account, you’ll see there is no income,” Qian said.

Painting a work in the style of a particular artist and signing a signature is not in itself a crime, however passing it off as an authentic work is illegal.

Qian says he no longer creates look-alike works and spends his time in a small, one bedroom apartment surrounded by hundreds of paintings signed in his own name. He was a well-known artist in China years before the Long Island ring was revealed, with frequent exhibitions and even a hardcover book published devoted to his life and work. Now, that work continues.

“Painting. Painting. Painting,” Qian said of how he spends his days. “Everything is done for painting.”

[admin]

How to Make a Fake: The Story of Ely Sakhai

“We should all realize that we can only talk about the bad forgeries, the ones that have been detected; the good ones are still hanging on the walls.”

- Theodore Rousseau.

Saiko. (2017). Vase de fleurs (Lilas) by Paul Gauguin [Photograph]. Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... ,_1896.jpg

The art world revolves around the concept of authenticity to a large extent. In art transactions, fakes, forgeries and misattributions are perceived as a major risk for buyers; a fake artwork or one whose authenticity is difficult or impossible to establish with a high degree of certainty will lose its commercial value and could represent a total loss for its buyer. Determining authenticity is a complex task. Usually, when doubt arises, three areas should be explored to give an overall picture of authenticity. First of all, someone should consider the experts' opinions, including artists' foundations, authentication boards, and the catalogues raisonnés. Also, the provenance documents should be examined while an art historical research is in progress. The final step is the scientific tests of the artwork. Nowadays, with the technology development, scientific tests would be a reliable source for the verification of the authentication of artworks while saving time. The best practice is to gather information from all these three areas and not just rely on one source alone. In practice, it is a process of asking the right questions, obtaining and verifying information and, applying common sense. However, what happens when not even an experienced eye can tell the difference between an original and a fake work? How someone can deceive the whole art world for years?


Source: (2018). Art Forgery: Why Do We Care So Much for Originals? [Photograph]. Art Acacia Level. https://inna-13021.medium.com/art-forge ... c4d88fd241

Back in May 2000, Christie’s and Sotheby’s launched their spring catalogues for their auctions when they discovered that they were offering the same painting: Vase de fleurs (Lilas) by Paul Gauguin. As it was expected, both auction houses thought that they had the original painting, so they began the proceedings to prove the authentication of the work they owned. The auction houses flew both paintings to Sylvie Crussard, a Gauguin expert at the Wildenstein Institution in Paris. She put them side by side and in a few minutes saw that the Christie's version “was not right.” However, the peculiar part is that, as Crussard said, “This was a unique case of resemblance. You never see two works that are that similar." Christie’s version was the best Gauguin counterfeit she had ever seen.

The great man theory is a 19th-century approach to the study of history according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect. The theory is primarily attributed to the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle who gave a series of lectures on heroism in 1840, later published as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, in which he states:

Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.

This theory is usually contrasted with "history from below", which emphasizes the life of the masses creating overwhelming waves of smaller events which carry leaders along with them.

-- Great Man Theory, by Wikipedia

Vase de fleurs is a middle-market painting which means it changes hands usually for only a few hundred thousand dollars. It may seem like an extraordinary amount of money but for the art market, it is considered a middle price. So, the whole auction process usually takes place without much fanfare. A reality that makes the painting the perfect "victim" for a forger. Christie's broke the news to the owners of their version at the gallery Muse in Tokyo. The owners, totally in shock, claimed that they had no idea it was a forgery. On the other hand, Sotheby’s version was successfully auctioned for $310,000. The owner of the painting was a New York dealer named Ely Sakhai. The most interesting part of that forgery case came up some years later when the FBI's six-year investigation showed surprisingly that the original source of the fake work was none other than Ely Sakhai himself.

The story of Ely Sakhai goes back to his childhood when he emigrated from Iran to New York and started working with his brother at an antique shop, where they realized that if they made good fakes, people would pay a big amount of money in order to get one. The more real they looked the more money they could get. In this way, he created a small fortune and decided to follow a more risky plan. So, he started to buy original middle-market paintings, from artists like Monet, Gauguin and Chagall. He basically chose paintings that were not that well known and hired someone in order to make copies of them. Sakhai often sold the copies in Asia with either their original certificates of authenticity or with copies of the original ones and waited a couple of years to sell the original paintings in the Western market. This activity continued from 1985 until 2003. In our case, following his motive, he sold the fake copy to a Tokyo collector and after some years he put the original painting up for auction. It was a risky attempt to double his profits, with the existence of twin paintings. It was totally a coincidence that the Tokyo owner decided to resell his copy at the same time. But if this didn’t happen, the forgery might never have been detected.

Today, there is still something mysterious about that case, simply because we still don’t know who is the person who created the fakes. We have some clues in order to create his profile, but we should still face the elements carefully. It is believed that the forger is unlikely to have been American; American art schools now rarely teach traditional oil techniques. In contrast, they suggest China as a more likely place, because there were plenty of laborers with people using that specific technique. Our third and last clue comes from Sylvie Crussard who claimed that the painter must have been young. She doesn’t feel like an old person could have painted something like that. We still don’t know; all we can do is just speculate. It was a tough case for the FBI who had to cooperate with police from several countries, and also the need to translate in many cases. So, naturally that fact might have impeded the process. The success of his plan lies in the fact that Sakhai chooses to avoid the New York market, and that’s not a random move. First of all, he wants to avoid the local heat, but most importantly, he prefers a market which doesn’t have easy access to experts who can spot a fake. So, they give big attention to the certificates of authenticity. A forger who can transfer a real certificate to a counterfeit, like Sakhai, has a lot of chances not to be spotted. And even more, if we are talking for middle-market paintings. In 2005, Sakhai pleaded guilty and was fined $12.5 million to collectors who bought from him 11 fake artworks. Also, he was sentenced to 41 months in prison.

References:

Adam, G. (2004, March 31). New York art dealer Ely Sakhai accused of forgery scam as he sells masterpieces twice. The Art Newspaper. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/archive ... rgery-scam

Art & Beyond. (2020, July 3). Art and Authenticity. https://artandbeyond.gallery/blog/29-art-authenticity/

Subramanian, S. (2018, June 15). How to spot a perfect Fake: the world’s top art forgery detective. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/j ... -detective

Thomas, K. (2005, July 19). Update: Gallerist goes to prison on Art forgery charges. ARTnews.
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/u ... rges-1959/

Thompson, C. (2004, May 20). How to make a fake. New York
https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/9179/

United States v. Sakhai, No.04-cr-583, (D.N.Y. 2005, July 6)
https://www.ifar.org/case_summary.php?docid=1179739975

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Brazen forgery was art world's "most brilliant" con
by Rob Beschizza
Mon AUG 3, 2015 8:42 AM



To make sure he couldn't be caught, Ely Sakhai bought the original first—a Rembrandt of enormous value. This "incredibly brazen" con almost worked, writes Anthony M. Amore.

The authenticity of his Rembrandt, The Apostle James, was not questioned. Nor was the fact that it was purchased by Ely Sakhai from a reputable source. So when he would offer what he purported to be the painting for sale, it didn't raise questions about authenticity, if only because those interested in the painting perhaps failed to imagine the nefarious scheme of the seller. Thanks in large measure to his travels in the Far East with his wife, Sakhai made it his mission to establish a steady clientele in Tokyo and Taiwan too. and in June 1997, he sold his Rembrandt to the Japanese businessman and art collector Yoichi Takeuchi.

A key thing is that the forgeries -- and those sold to Sakhai's later victims -- were immediately debunked when inspected by experts. It's easy to get fooled and get wise again. For forgers, the message is still the medium, but only the forger knows which medium.

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Ely Sakhai
by alchetron.com
April 11, 2022



Ely Sakhai (born 1952) is a United States art dealer and civil engineer who owned Lower Manhattan art galleries The Art Collection and Exclusive Art. He was later charged and convicted for selling forged art and was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for fraud. After his release he continued to operate The Art Collection in Great Neck, New York.



Sakhai emigrated from Iran to the United States in 1962 and gained a civil engineering degree from Columbia University. He later developed an interest in art and opened a number of small art galleries in the 1970s and 80s. In the 1980s, Sakhai purchased a range of impressionist and post-impressionist works by artists including Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin, Marie Laurencin, Monet, Auguste Renoir and Paul Klee.

He and his wife became well-respected members of the Long Island community where they donated significant amounts of money to Jewish organisations and established a Torah study centre.

Art forgery allegations

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Attorney's Office, Sakhai bought lesser-known works and had the paintings copied by Chinese immigrants working in the upstairs area of his gallery.

Sakhai then took the genuine certificates of authenticity and attached them to copies to sell. Months or years later he would obtain a new certificate of authenticity for the original and then sell it. In several instances he sold the forgeries to Asian collectors and real works to New York and London galleries. According to reports, Japanese collectors trusted the certificates and would not subsequently commission European experts to authenticate the paintings. Sakhai would also buy relatively worthless paintings to reuse the canvases for new forgeries. Sakhai denied involvement and suggested that he often consigned paintings to other dealers which put them out of his control.

Charges and conviction

In May 2000, both Christie's and Sotheby's realized they were both offering Paul Gauguin's Vase de Fleurs (also known as Lilas), both supposedly original. Both auction houses took the paintings to Gauguin expert Sylvie Crussard at the Wildenstein Institute in Paris. She confirmed that the Christie's painting was a forgery; Christie's had to withdraw their catalogue from the printers. They also informed the owners, Gallery Muse in Tokyo. The original painting was auctioned at Sotheby's and Ely Sakhai received $310,000 which was traced by the FBI.

On March 9, 2000, the FBI arrested Sakhai at his gallery on Broadway and charged him with eight counts of wire and mail fraud and estimated Sakhai had made $3.5 million from the deals. He was later released on bail.

On March 4, 2004, Sakhai was charged with eight counts of fraud, and again released on bail. Later in 2004 he pleaded guilty to, according to his lawyer, "resolve his difficulties with the government and get this behind him". In July 2005 he was sentenced to 41 months in prison, fined $12.5 million, and ordered to forfeit eleven works of art. Both before and after charges were laid, Sakhai maintained he was innocent and openly discussed the case and his other business ventures with journalists.

Other business ventures

After charges were laid against him, Sakhai closed his Manhattan galleries and opened a new gallery, The Art Collection, in Great Neck, New York, which he continued to operate after his imprisonment. In 2009, Sakhai cooperated with ICE agents seeking to return a copy of Anto-Carte's Young Girl in a Blue Dress [Jeune Fille a la Robe Bleue] stolen by the Nazis during World War II.



Sakhai remains a resident of New York.

References: Ely Sakhai Wikipedia

[admin]

A Fake Chagall Painting? Attribution and Authenticity in the Auction World
by Liz Catalano
Auction Daily
Published on Jul 15, 22

What happens when art experts change their minds? For one collector, that could result in the loss of a major asset: a painting formerly attributed to Marc Chagall. The piece was worth USD 100,000 until an expert panel weighed in.


A painting, formerly attributed to Marc Chagall, owned by Stephanie Clegg. Image courtesy of Stephanie Clegg via The New York Times.

Stephanie Clegg purchased a painting attributed to Marc Chagall at a Sotheby’s auction in 1994. At the time, she paid $90,000 for the work. Experts reappraised the watercolor painting at a value of $100,000 in 2008. But when Clegg prepared to sell her Chagall painting with Sotheby’s in 2020, a panel of French art experts declared that the work is inauthentic. The allegedly fake Chagall painting may now be destroyed by the artist’s heirs.

Clegg claims that Sotheby’s bears some responsibility for the situation. The watercolor piece was listed in the original 1994 auction catalog as a Marc Chagall painting, and when Clegg returned to Sotheby’s to sell the work, the auction house assured her that the authenticity panel review was merely a formality. This was not necessarily the case. Authenticity committees hold significant power over the auction world, and this issue of the fake Chagall painting is hardly an isolated incident.

“You could have a photograph of Chagall painting this,” said art market lawyer Thomas C. Danziger, “and have his own written testimony that he did, but if the [Chagall authenticity] Comité says it’s not by the artist then, for the purposes of the art market, it’s not by the artist.”

For its part, Sotheby’s has offered Clegg a credit of $18,500 toward any fees on future art purchases. To Clegg, the offered sum is a far cry from the original price she paid for the fake Chagall painting and the loss of a significant asset.


A page from a 1994 Sotheby’s auction catalog, picturing the allegedly fake Chagall painting. Image courtesy of The New York Times.

The case raises old debates about the responsibilities of auction houses to establish and regulate authenticity. In-house experts can add attributions and track a work’s history, and big-ticket items are often vetted by individuals or committees of experts. And in the auction world, it is difficult to overstate the importance of well-documented provenance.

Yet beyond paintings and furniture and decorative art, companies like Sotheby’s and Christie’s mostly deal with perceived value. A change in attribution can turn a thrift shop find into a multi-million-dollar treasure. Such stories more frequently appear in the headlines. Changing expert opinions can also sink the value of a work beyond recognition. Limited authenticity warranties provide a buffer against this issue, but some argue that this is not enough to protect collectors against disaster.


Portrait of a Man, an allegedly fake painting attributed to Frans Hals. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.

There is little tolerance for deliberate hoaxes in the art world. In the case of a fake Frans Hals painting that changed hands in a Sotheby’s private sale, the auction house moved swiftly to reimburse the painting’s owner and take a disgraced art dealer to court. There is no such mastermind in the recent case of the fake Chagall painting, or at least not yet. However, the questions that the auction world asked after the Frans Hals forgery are still unanswered. The influence of unofficial “connoisseurs” in the auction attribution process is not fully known. The handling of changed attributions remains contentious. And for collectors looking to invest or appreciate a work of art, there is still a risk of being burned.

Find the latest auction world news, previews of upcoming events, and more on Auction Daily.

[admin]

Thrasyllus of Mendes
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/22

Thrasyllus was a key figure; for a while he was a key influence. His visible influence declined with Neoplatonism, but his unseen influence continues today unseen, perhaps, because we cannot adequately distinguish Thrasyllus from Plato. That was always his intention -- that Thrasyllus' Plato should be our Plato too. This was no game that he was playing, but a mission; the same sort of mission that Platonists regularly embark upon. He should not be criticized. With these remarks my own mission must end too. I require only that the reader reflect upon the issues raised. I do not require that my Thrasyllus be your Thrasyllus, let alone that my Plato be yours. Let this be my cock for Asclepius.

-- Thrassyllan Platonism, by Harold Tarrant, © 1993 by Cornell University

This article is about the Egyptian Greek astrologer and philosopher. For the Athenian general, see Thrasyllus. For the phasmids genus, see Thrasyllus (phasmid).

Thrasyllus of Mendes (/θrəˈsɪləs/; Greek: Θράσυλλος Thrasyllos), also known as Thrasyllus of Alexandria[1] and by his Roman name Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus[2] (fl. second half of the 1st century BC and first half of the 1st century – died 36,[3][4]), was an Egyptian Greek grammarian and literary commentator. Thrasyllus was an astrologer and a personal friend of the Roman emperor Tiberius,[4] as mentioned in the Annals by Tacitus and The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius.

Background

Thrasyllus[5] was an Egyptian of Greek descent from unknown origins, as his family and ancestors were contemporaries that lived under the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. He originally was either from Mendes or Alexandria. Thrasyllus is often mentioned in various secondary sources as coming from Alexandria (as mentioned in the Oxford Classical Dictionary) as no primary source confirms his origins.

Tiberius

Thrasyllus encountered Tiberius during the period of Tiberius' voluntary exile on the Greek island of Rhodes, some time between 1 BC and 4 AD.[1] Thrasyllus became the intimate and celebrated servant of Tiberius, and Tiberius developed an interest in Stoicism and Astrology from Thrasyllus.[1]

He predicted that Tiberius would be recalled to Rome and officially named the successor to Augustus. When Tiberius returned to Rome, Thrasyllus accompanied him and remained close to him.[6] During the reign of the emperor Tiberius, Thrasyllus served as his skilled Court Astrologer both in Rome and, later, in Capri.[4] As Tiberius held Thrasyllus in the highest honor, he rewarded him for his friendship by giving Roman citizenship to him and his family.[1]

The daughter-in-law of Tiberius, his niece Livilla, reportedly consulted Thrasyllus during her affair with Sejanus, Tiberius' chief minister. Thrasyllus persuaded Tiberius to leave Rome for Capri while clandestinely supporting Sejanus. The grandson-in-law of Thrasyllus, Naevius Sutorius Macro, carried out orders that destroyed Sejanus, whether with Thrasyllus’ knowledge is unknown. He remained on Capri with Tiberius, advising the Emperor on his relationship with the various claimants to his succession. Thrasyllus was an ally[7] who favored Tiberius’ great-nephew Caligula, who was having an affair with his granddaughter, Ennia Thrasylla.[2]

In 36 AD, Thrasyllus is said to have made Tiberius believe he would survive another ten years.[7] With this false prediction, Thrasyllus saved the lives of a number of Roman nobles who would be suspected in falsely plotting against Tiberius. Tiberius, believing in Thrasyllus, was confident that he would outlive any plotters, and so failed to act against them. Thrasyllus predeceased Tiberius, so did not live to see the realization of his prediction that Caligula would succeed Tiberius.

Academic work

Thrasyllus by profession was a grammarian (i.e. literary scholar).[4] He edited the written works of Plato and Democritus. According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, he wrote that the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt took place in 1690 BC. The sections include, Dedumose I, Ipuwer Papyrus and Shiphrah.

He was the author of an astrological text titled Pinax or Table,[4] which is lost but has been summarized in later sources, such as: CCAG - Catalogue of the Codices of the Greek astrologers (8/3: 99–101) which borrows the astrological notions found in Nechepso/Petosiris (see article on Hellenistic astrology) and in Hermes Trismegistus, an early pseudepigraphical source of astrology. Pinax was known and cited by the later following astrological writers: Vettius Valens, Porphyry and Hephaistio.[4]

Family and issue

Thrasyllus may have married a member of the royal family of Commagene (whose name is sometimes given as "Aka"), though this has been questioned recently.[8] He had two known children:

• an unnamed daughter[9] who married the Eques Lucius Ennius.[9] She bore Ennius, a daughter called Ennia Thrasylla,[9] who became the wife of Praetorian prefect Naevius Sutorius Macro, and perhaps a son called Lucius Ennius who was the father of Lucius Ennius Ferox, a Roman Soldier who served during the reign of the Roman emperor Vespasian[10] from 69 until 79
• a son called Tiberius Claudius Balbilus,[11][8] through whom he had further descendants

In fiction

Thrasyllus is a character in the novel series, written by Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Thrasyllus' predictions are always correct, and his prophecies are equally far-reaching. Thrasyllus predicts Jesus of Nazareth's crucifixion and that his religion shall overtake the Roman Pagan Religion. Similarly towards the end of his life it is explained that his final prophecy was misinterpreted by Tiberius. Thrasyllus states that "Tiberius Claudius will be emperor in 10 years," leading Tiberius to brashly criticize and mock Caligula, whereas his prophecy is correct as Claudius' name is "Tiberius Claudius".

In the TV miniseries adaptation of the novels, Thrasyllus was played by Kevin Stoney, who had previously played him in the 1968 ITV series The Caesars.

In contrast, Thrasyllus and his descendants are presented as power-hungry charlatans in the novel series Romanike.[12]

References

1. Levick, Tiberius: The Politician, p. 7
2. Levick, Tiberius: The Politician, p. 137
3. Thrasyllus’ article at ancient library Archived 2012-10-20 at the Wayback Machine
4. Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, p. 26
5. The name Thrasyllus is an ancient Greek name which derives from the Greek thrasy – meaning bold
6. Thrasyllus’ article at ancient library Archived 2012-10-20 at the Wayback Machine
7. Levick, Tiberius: The Politician, p. 167
8. Beck, Beck on Mithraism: Collected Works With New Essays, pp. 42-3
9. Levick, Tiberius: The Politician, pp. 137, 230
10. Coleman-Norton, Ancient Roman Statutes, p.151-2
11. Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, p. 29
12. The Romanike series, Codex Regius (2006-2014) Archived 2016-08-06 at the Wayback Machine

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica
• Thrasyllus’ article at ancient library
• F.H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA, 1954
• P. Robinson Coleman-Norton and F. Card Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, The Lawbook Exchange Limited, 1961
• B. Levick, Tiberius: The Politician, Routledge, 1999
• M. Zimmerman, G. Schmeling, H. Hofmann, S. Harrison and C. Panayotakis (eds.), Ancient Narrative, Barkhuis, 2002
• R. Beck, Beck on Mithraism: Collected Works With New Essays, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004
• J. H. Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, American Federation of Astrology, 2006
• Royal genealogy of Mithradates III of Commagene at rootsweb
• Royal genealogy of Aka II of Commagene at rootsweb
• Genealogy of daughter of Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus and Aka II of Commagene at rootsweb

External links

• Article on the life, works, and legacy of Thrasyllus
• Article on how Tiberius tested Thrasyllus by Shyamasundara Dasa