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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.


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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

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

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.

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

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

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Arcadio Huang [Arcadius Hoang]
by Wikipedia
Accessed 8/6/2022

Fourmont's Dirty Little Secret

When Joseph DE GUIGNES (1721-1800) at the young age of fifteen was placed with Etienne FOURMONT (1683-1745), Fourmont enjoyed a great reputation as one of Europe's foremost specialists of classical as well as oriental languages. As an associate of Abbe Bignon (the man so eager to stock the Royal Library with Oriental texts), Fourmont had met a Chinese scholar called Arcadius HOANG (1679-1716) and had for a short while studied Chinese with him (Elisseeff 1985:133ff.; Abel-Remusat 1829:1.260). In 1715 the thirty-two-year-old Fourmont was elected to the chair of Arabic at the College Royal. Hoang's death in 1716 did not diminish Fourmont's desire to learn Chinese, and in 1719 he followed Nicolas FRERET (1688-1749) in introducing Europe to the 214 Chinese radicals. This is one of the systems used by the Chinese to classify Chinese characters and to make finding them, be it in a dictionary or a printer's shop, easier and quicker.

Thanks to royal funding for his projected grammar and dictionaries, Fourmont had produced more than 100,000 Chinese character types. But in Fourmont's eyes the 214 radicals were far more than just a classification method. Naming them "clefs" (keys), he was convinced that they were meaningful building blocks that the ancient Chinese had used in constructing characters. For example, Fourmont thought that the first radical (-) is "the key of unity, or priority, and perfection" and that the second radical (׀) signifies "growth" (Klaproth 1828:234). Starting with the 214 basic "keys," so Fourmont imagined, the ancient Chinese had combined them to form the tens of thousands of characters of the Chinese writing system. However, as Klaproth and others later pointed out, the Chinese writing system was not "formed from its origin after a general system"; rather, it had evolved gradually from "the necessity of inventing a sign to express some thing or some idea." The idea of classifying characters according to certain elements arose only much later and resulted in several systems with widely different numbers of radicals ranging from a few dozen to over 700 (Klaproth 1828:233-36).

Like many students of Chinese or Japanese, Fourmont had probably memorized characters by associating their elements with specific meanings. A German junior world champion in the memory sport, Christiane Stenger, employs a similar technique for remembering mathematical equations. Each element is assigned a concrete meaning; for example, the minus sign signifies "go backward" or "vomit," the letter A stands for "apple," the letter B for "bear," the letter C for "cirrus fruit," and the mathematical root symbol for a root. Thus, "B minus C" is memorized by imagining a bear vomiting a citrus fruit, and "minus B plus the root of A square" may be pictured as a receding bear who stumbles over a root in which a square apple is embedded.

Stenger's technique, of course, has no connection whatsoever to understanding mathematical formulae, but Fourmont's "keys" can indeed be of help in understanding the meaning of some characters. While such infusion of meaning certainly helped Fourmont and his students Michel-Ange-Andre le Roux DESHAUTERAYES (1724-95) and de Guignes in their study of complicated Chinese characters, it also involved a serious misunderstanding. Stenger understood that bears and fruit were her imaginative creation in order to memorize mathematical formulae and would certainly not have graduated from high school if she had thought that her mathematics teacher wanted to tell her stories about apples and bears.

But mutatis mutandis, this was exactly Fourmont's mistake. Instead of simply accepting the 214 radicals as an artificial system for classifying Chinese characters and as a mnemonic aide, he was convinced that the radicals are a collection of primeval ideas that the Chinese used as a toolset to assemble ideograms representing objects and complex ideas. Fourmont thought that the ancient Chinese had embedded a little story in each character. As he and his disciples happily juggled with "keys," spun stories, and memorized their daily dose of Chinese characters, they did not have any inkling that this fundamentally mistaken view of the genesis of Chinese characters would one day form the root for a mistake of such proportions that it would put de Guignes's entire reputation in jeopardy.

Apart from a series of dictionaries that never came to fruition, Fourmont was also working on a Chinese grammar. He announced its completion in 1728, eight years before the arrival of de Guignes. The first part of this Grammatica sinica with Fourmont's presentation of the 214 "keys" and elements of pronunciation appeared in 1737. The second part, prepared for publication while de Guignes sat at his teacher's feet, contained the grammar proper as well as Fourmont's catalog of Chinese works in the Bibliotheque Royale and was published in 1742. When Fourmont presented the result to the king of France, he had de Guignes accompany him, and the king was so impressed by the twenty-one-year-old linguistic prodigy that he endowed him on the spot with a pension (Michaud 1857:18.126).

But de Guignes's teacher Fourmont had a dirty little secret. He had focused on learning and accumulating data about single Chinese characters, but his knowledge of the Chinese classical and vernacular language was simply not adequate for writing a grammar. By consequence, the man who had let the world know that a genius residing in Europe could master Chinese just as well as the China missionaries decided to plagiarize -- what else? -- the work of a missionary. No one found out about this until Jean-Pierre Abel-Remusat in 1825 carefully compared the manuscript of the Arte de La lengua mandarina by the Spanish Franciscan Francisco Varo with Fourmont's Latin translation and found to his astonishment that Fourmont's ground-breaking Grammatica sinica was a translation of Varo's work (Abel-Remusat 1829:2.298). In an "act of puerile vanity," Abel-Remusat sadly concluded, Fourmont had appropriated Varo's entire text "almost without any change" while claiming that he had never seen it (1826:2.109).2

While de Guignes helped prepare this grammar for publication, Fourmont continued his research on chronology and the history of ancient peoples. During the seventeenth century, ancient Chinese historical sources had become an increasingly virulent threat to biblical chronology and, by extension, to biblical authority. As Fourmont's rival Freret was busy butchering Isaac Newton's lovingly calculated chronology, de Guignes's teacher turned his full attention to the Chinese annals. These annals were in general regarded either as untrustworthy and thus inconsequential or as trustworthy and a threat to biblical authority. However, in a paper read on May 18, 1734, at the Royal Academy of Inscriptions, Fourmont declared with conviction that he could square the circle: the Chinese annals were trustworthy just because they confirmed the Bible.

Dismissing Freret's and Newton's nonbiblical Middle Eastern sources as "scattered scraps," he praised the Chinese annals to the sky as the only ancient record worth studying apart from the Bible (Fourmont 1740:507-8).

But Fourmont's lack of critical acumen is as evident in this paper as in his Critical reflections on the histories of ancient peoples of 1735 and the Meditationes sinicae of 1737. In the "avertissement" to the first volume of the Critical reflections, Fourmont mentions the question of an India traveler, Chevalier Didier, who had conversed with Brahmins and missionaries and came in frustration to Paris to seek Fourmont's opinion about an important question of origins: had Indian idolatry influenced Egyptian idolatry or vice versa? Fourmont delivered his answer after nearly a thousand tedious pages full of chronological juggling:

With regard to customs in general, since India is entirely Egyptian and Osiris led several descendants of Abraham there, we have the first cause of that resemblance of mores in those two nations; but with regard to the religion of the Indians, they only received it subsequently through commerce and through the colonies coming from Egypt. (Fourmont 1735:2-499)

For Fourmont the Old Testament was the sole reliable testimony of antediluvian times, and he argued that the reliability of other accounts decreases with increasing distance from the landing spot of Noah's ark. Only the Chinese, whose "language is the oldest of the universe," remain a riddle, as their antiquity "somehow rivals that of Genesis and has caused the most famous chronologists to change their system" (1735:1.lii). But would not China's "hieroglyphic" writing system also indicate Egyptian origins? Though Fourmont suspected an Egyptian origin of Chinese writing, he could not quite figure out the exact mechanism and transmission. He suspected that "Hermes, who passed for the inventor of letters" had not invented hieroglyphs but rather "on one hand more perfect hieroglyphic letters, which were brought to the Chinese who in turn repeatedly perfected theirs; and on the other hand alphabetic letters" (Fourmont 1735:2.500). These "more perfect hieroglyphs" that "seemingly existed with the Egyptian priests" are "quite similar to the Chinese characters of today" (p. 500).

Fourmont was studying whether there was any support for Kircher's hypothesis that the letters transmitted from Egypt to the Chinese were related to Coptic monosyllables (p. 503); but though he apparently did not find conclusive answers to such questions, the problem itself and Fourmont's basic direction (transmission from Egypt to China, some kind of more perfect hieroglyphs) must have been so firmly planted in his student de Guignes's mind that it could grow into the root over which he later stumbled. Fourmont's often repeated view that Egypt's culture was not as old as that of countries closer to the landing spot of Noah's ark made it clear that those who regarded Egypt as the womb of all human culture were dead wrong and that China, in spite of its ancient culture, was a significant step removed from the true origins.

Though the Chinese had received their writing system and probably also the twin ideas that in his view "properly constitute Egyptianism" -- the idea of metempsychosis and the adoration of animals and plants (p. 492) -- Fourmont credited the Chinese with subsequent improvements also in this respect: "My studies have thus taught me that the Chinese were a wise people, the most ancient of all peoples, but the first also, though idolatrous, that rid itself of the mythological spirit" (Fourmont 1735:2.liv). This accounted for their excellent historiography and voluminous literature:

I said that the Chinese Annals can be regarded as a respectable work. First of all, as everybody admits, for more than 3,500 years China has been populated, cultivated, and literate. Secondly, has it lacked authors as its people still read books, though few in number, written before Abraham? Thirdly, since few scholars know the Chinese books, let me here point out that the Chinese Annals are not bits and pieces of histories scattered here and there like the Latin and Greek histories which must be stitched together: they consist of at least 150 volumes that, without hiatus and the slightest interruption, present a sequence of 22 families which all reigned for 3, 4, 8, 10 centuries. (p. liv)

While Fourmont cobbled together hypotheses and conjectures, the Bible always formed the backdrop for his speculations about ancient history. A telling example is his critique of the Chinese historian OUYANG Xiu (1007-72), who argued that from the remote past, humans had always enjoyed roughly similar life spans. Lambasting this view as that of a "skeptic," Fourmont furnished the following argument as "proof" of the reliability of ancient Chinese histories:

We who possess the sacred writ: must we not on the contrary admire the Chinese annals when they, just in the time period of Arphaxad, Saleh, Heber, Phaleg, Rea, Sarug, Nachor, Abraham, etc., present us with men who lived precisely the same number of years? Now if someone told us that Seth at the age of 550 years married one of his grand-grand-nieces in the fourteenth generation: who of us would express the slightest astonishment? ... It is thus clear that all such objections are frivolous, and furthermore, that attacks against the Chinese annals on account of a circumstance [i.e., excessive longevity] which distinguishes them from all other books will actually tie them even more to Scripture and will be a sure means to increase their authority. (Fourmont 1740:514)

No comment is needed here.

Immediately after Fourmont's death in 1745, the twenty-four-year-old Joseph de Guignes replaced his master as secretary interpreter of oriental languages at the Royal Library. It was the beginning of an illustrious career: royal censor and attache to the journal des Scavans in 1752, member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1753, chair of Syriac at the College Royal from 1757 to 1773, garde des antiques at the Louvre in 1769, editor of the Journal des Savants, and other honors (Michaud 1857:18.(27). De Guignes had, like his master Fourmont, a little problem. The pioneer Sinologists in Paris were simply unable to hold a candle to the China missionaries. Since 1727 Fourmont had been corresponding with the figurist China missionary Joseph Henry PREMARE (1666-1736), who, unlike Fourmont, was an accomplished Sinologist (see Chapter 5). Premare was very liberal with his advice and sent, apart from numerous letters, his Notitia Linguae sinicae to Fourmont in 1728. This was, in the words of Abel-Remusat,

neither a simple grammar, as the author too modestly calls it, nor a rhetoric, as Fourmont intimated; it is an almost complete treatise of literature in which Father Premare not only included everything that he had collected about the usage of particles and grammatical rules of the Chinese but also a great number of observations about the style, particular expressions in ancient and common idiom, proverbs, most frequent patterns -- and everything supported by a mass of examples cited from texts, translated and commented when necessary. (Abel-Remusat 1829:2.269)

Premare thus sent Fourmont his "most remarkable and important work," which was "without any doubt the best of all those that Europeans have hitherto composed on these matters" (p. 269).

But instead of publishing this vastly superior work and making the life of European students of Chinese considerably easier, Fourmont compared it unfavorably to his own (partly plagiarized) product and had Premare's masterpiece buried in the Royal Library, where it slept until Abel-Remusat rediscovered it in the nineteenth century (pp. 269-73). However, Fourmont's two disciples Deshauterayes and de Guignes could profit from such works since Fourmont for years kept the entire China-related collection of the Royal Library at his home where the two disciples had their rooms; thus Premare was naturally one of the Sinologists who influenced de Guignes.4 So was Antoine GAUBIL (1689-1759), whose reputation as a Sinologist was deservedly great.

But there is a third, extremely competent Jesuit Sinologist who remained in the shadows, though his knowledge of Chinese far surpassed that of de Guignes and all other Europe-based early Sinologists (and, one might add, even many modern ones). His works suffered a fate resembling that of the man who was in many ways his predecessor, Joao Rodrigues (see Chapter 1) in that they were used but rarely credited. The man in question was Claude de VISDELOU (1656-1737), who spent twenty-four years in China (1685-1709) and twenty-eight years in India (1709-37). One can say without exaggeration that the famous Professor de Guignes owed this little-known missionary a substantial part of his fame -- and this was his dirty little secret.

-- The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App

Arcadio Huang
Traditional Chinese 黃嘉略
Simplified Chinese 黄嘉略

Arcadio Huang (Chinese: 黃嘉略, born in Xinghua, modern Putian, in Fujian, 15 November 1679, died on 1 October 1716 in Paris)[1][2] was a Chinese Christian convert, brought to Paris by the Missions étrangères [Paris Foreign Missions Society]. He took a pioneering role in the teaching of the Chinese language in France around 1715. He was preceded in France by his compatriot Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, who visited the country in 1684.

His main works, conducted with the assistance of young Nicolas Fréret, are the first Chinese-French lexicon, the first Chinese grammar of the Chinese, and the diffusion in France of the Kangxi system with two hundred fourteen radicals, which was used in the preparation of his lexicon.

His early death in 1716 prevented him from finishing his work, however, and Étienne Fourmont, who received the task of sorting his papers, assumed all the credit for their publication.

Only the insistence of Nicolas Fréret, as well as the rediscovery of the memories of Huang Arcadio have re-established the pioneering work of Huang, as the basis which enabled French linguists to address more seriously the Chinese language.

Origins

Here is the genealogy of Arcadio Huang (originally spelled Hoange) according to Stephen Fourmont:

"Paul Huang, of the Mount of the Eagle, son of Kian-khin (Kiam-kim) Huang, Imperial assistant of the provinces of Nâne-kin (Nanjing) and Shan-ton (Shandong), and lord of the Mount of the Eagle, was born in the city of Hin-houa (Xinghua), in the province of Fò-kién (Fujian), Feb. 12, 1638; was baptized by the Jesuit Father Antonio de Govea, Portuguese, and was married in 1670 with the Miss Apollonie la Saule, named Léou-sien-yâm (Leù-sièn-yam) in the local language, daughter of Mr. Yâm, nicknamed Lou-ooue (Lû-ve), lord Doctor of Leôu-sièn (Leû-sièn) and governor of the city of Couan-sine (Guangxin), in the province of Kiam-si (Jiangxi). Arcadio Huang, interpreter of the King of France, son of Paul Huang, was born in the same city of Hin-Houa, on November 15, 1679, and was christened on November 21 of that year by the Jacobin Father Arcadio of ..., of Spanish nationality. Through his marriage, he had a daughter who is still alive; he added to his genealogy Marie-Claude Huang, of the Eagle Mountain, daughter of Mr. Huang, interpreter to the king, and so on.; She was born March 4, 1715."

He received the education of a Chinese literatus under the protection of French missionaries. The French missionaries saw in Arcadio an opportunity to create a "literate Chinese Christian" in the service of the evangelization of China. In these pioneer years (1690–1700), it was urgent to present to Rome examples of perfectly Christianized Chinese, in order to reinforce the Jesuits' position in the [Chinese] Rites controversy.

Journey to the West


Artus de Lionne (1655–1713), here in 1686, brought Arcadio Huang to Europe and France in 1702.

On 17 February 1702, under the protection of Artus de Lionne, Bishop of Rosalie,[3] Arcadio embarked on a ship of the English East India Company in order to reach London. By September or October 1702, Mr. de Rosalie and Arcadio left England for France, in order to travel to Rome.

On the verge of being ordained a priest in Rome and being presented to the pope to demonstrate the reality of Chinese Christianity, Arcadio Huang apparently renounced and declined ordination. Rosalie preferred to return to Paris to further his education, and wait for a better answer.

Installation in Paris

According to his memoirs, Arcadio moved to Paris in 1704 or 1705 at the home of the Foreign Missions [Paris Foreign Missions Society]. There, his protectors continued his religious and cultural training, with plans to ordain him for work in China. But Arcadio preferred life as a layman. He settled permanently in Paris as a "Chinese interpreter to the Sun King" and began working under the guidance and protection of abbot Jean-Paul Bignon.[3] It is alleged that he also became the king's librarian in charge of cataloging Chinese books in the Royal library.[2]

Huang encountered Montesquieu, with whom he had many discussions about Chinese customs.[4] Huang is said to have been Montesquieu's inspiration for the narrative device in his Persian Letters, an Asian who discusses the customs of the West.[5]

Huang became very well-known in Parisian salons. In 1713 Huang married a Parisian woman named Marie-Claude Regnier.[2] In 1715 she gave birth to a healthy daughter, also named Marie-Claude, but the mother died a few days later. Discouraged, Huang himself died a year and a half later, and their daughter died a few months after that.[2]

Work on the Chinese language

Helped by the young Nicolas Fréret (1688–1749), he began the hard work of pioneering a Chinese-French dictionary, a Chinese grammar, employing the Kangxi system of 214 character keys.

In this work, they were joined by Nicolas Joseph Delisle (1683–1745), a friend of Fréret, who gave a more cultural and geographical tone to their work and discussions. Deslisle's brother, Guillaume Delisle, was already a renowned geographer. Delisle encouraged Arcadio Huang to read Europe's best known and popular writings dealing with the Chinese Empire. Huang was surprised by the ethnocentric approach of these texts, reducing the merits of the Chinese people and stressing the civilizing role of the European peoples.

A third apprentice, by the name of Étienne Fourmont (imposed by Abbé Bignon), arrived and profoundly disturbed the team. One day, Fourmont was surprised copying Huang's work.[6]

Debate after his death


The Chinese grammar published by Étienne Fourmont in 1742

After the death of Huang on 1 October 1716, Fourmont became officially responsible for classifying papers of the deceased. He made a very negative report on the contents of these documents and continued to criticize the work of Huang. Continuing his work on the languages of Europe and Asia (and therefore the Chinese), he took all the credit for the dissemination of the 214 key system in France, and finally published a French-Chinese lexicon and a Chinese grammar, without acknowledging the work of Huang, whom he was continuing to denigrate publicly.

Meanwhile, Fréret, also an Academician, and above all a friend and first student of Arcadio Huang, wrote a thesis on the work and role of Arcadio in the dissemination of knowledge about China in France. Documents saved by Nicolas-Joseph Delisle, Arcadio's second student, also helped to publicize the role of the Chinese subject of the king of France.

Since then, other researchers and historians investigated his role, including Danielle Elisseeff who compiled Moi, Arcade interprète chinois du Roi Soleil in 1985.

See also

• Shen Fo-tsung, another Chinese person who visited France in 1684.
• Fan Shouyi, yet another Chinese person who lived in Europe in the early eighteenth century.
• Chinese diaspora in France
• China–France relations
• Jesuit China missions

Notes

1. First name also given as Arcadius (Latin) or Arcade (French); family name as Hoange, Ouange, Houange, etc...
2. Mungello, p.125
3. Barnes, p.82
4. Barnes, p.85
5. Conn, p.394
6. Danielle Elisseeff, Moi Arcade, interprète du roi-soleil, édition Arthaud, Paris, 1985.

References

• Barnes, Linda L. (2005) Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-01872-9
• Conn, Peter (1996) Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-56080-2
• Elisseeff, Danielle, Moi, Arcade, interprète chinois du Roi Soleil, Arthaud Publishing, Paris, 1985, ISBN 2-7003-0474-8 (Main source for this article, 189 pages)
• Fourmont, Etienne (1683–1745), Note on Arcadius Hoang.
• Mungello, David E. (2005) The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800 Rowman & Littlefield ISBN 0-7425-3815-X
• Spence, Jonathan D. (1993). "The Paris Years of Arcadio Huang". Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-30994-2.
• Xu Minglong (2004) 许明龙 Huang Jialüe yu zao qi Faguo Han xue 黃嘉略与早期法囯汉学, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.

[admin]

Forgery
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/31/22

-- Noble lie [Pious Fiction] [Pious Fraud] [Pious Invention], by Wikipedia
-- Outline of forgery, by Wikipedia
-- Literary forgery, by Wikipedia
-- False document, by Wikipedia
-- Pseudepigrapha, by Wikipedia
-- Donation of Constantine, by Wikipedia
-- A treasured manuscript in a college library that was believed to have been written by Galileo is a forgery, university says, by Aya Elamroussi
-- The Artist Who Got Rich Forging Picasso & Matisse: Real Fake: Elmyr de Hory, by Perspective
-- Forgery, by Wikipedia

When D. P. Walker wrote about "ancient theology" or prisca theologia, he firmly linked it to Christianity and Platonism (Walker 1972). On the first page of his book, Walker defined the term as follows:

By the term "Ancient Theology" I mean a certain tradition of Christian apologetic theology which rests on misdated texts. Many of the early Fathers, in particular Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius, in their apologetic works directed against pagan philosophers, made use of supposedly very ancient texts: Hermetica, Orphica, Sibylline Prophecies, Pythagorean Carmina Aurea, etc., most of which in fact date from the first four centuries of our era. [100-400 A.D.] These texts, written by the Ancient Theologians hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, were shown to contain vestiges of the true religion: monotheism, the Trinity, the creation of the world out of nothing through the Word, and so forth. It was from these that Plato [428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC)] took the religious truths to be found in his writings. [???!!!] (Walker 1972:1)

Walker described A revival of such "ancient theology" in the Renaissance and in "platonizing theologians from Ficino to Cudworth" who wanted to "integrate Platonism and Neoplatonism into Christianity, so that their own religious and philosophical beliefs might coincide" [!!!](p. 2). After the debunking of the genuineness and antiquity of the texts favored by these ancient theologians, the movement ought to have died; but Walker detected "a few isolated survivals" such as Athanasius Kircher, Pierre-Daniel Huet, and the Jesuit figurists of the French China mission (p. 194). For Walker the last Mohican of this movement, so to say, is Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686-1743), whose views are described in the final chapter of The Ancient Theology. But seen through the lens of our concerns here, one could easily extend this line to various figures in this book, for example, Jean Calmette, John Zephaniah Holwell, Abbe Vincent Mignot, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, Guillaume Sainte-Croix, and also to William Jones (App 2009).

-- The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App

On the right, the real sheet of a theatre surimono by Kunisada, on the left with a faked signature of Hokkei, c. 1825

Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself).[1][2] Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbidden by law in some jurisdictions but such an offense is not related to forgery unless the tampered legal instrument was actually used in the course of the crime to defraud another person or entity. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations.

Forging money or currency is more often called counterfeiting. But consumer goods may also be counterfeits if they are not manufactured or produced by the designated manufacturer or producer given on the label or flagged by the trademark symbol. When the object forged is a record or document it is often called a false document.

This usage of "forgery" does not derive from metalwork done at a blacksmith's forge, but it has a parallel history. A sense of "to counterfeit" is already in the Anglo-French verb forger, meaning "falsify".

A forgery is essentially concerned with a produced or altered object. Where the prime concern of a forgery is less focused on the object itself – what it is worth or what it "proves" – than on a tacit statement of criticism that is revealed by the reactions the object provokes in others, then the larger process is a hoax. In a hoax, a rumor or a genuine object planted in a concocted situation, may substitute for a forged physical object.

The similar crime of fraud is the crime of deceiving another, including through the use of objects obtained through forgery. Forgery is one of the techniques of fraud, including identity theft. Forgery is one of the threats addressed by security engineering.

In the 16th century, imitators of Albrecht Dürer's style of printmaking improved the market for their own prints by signing them "AD", making them forgeries. In the 20th century the art market made forgeries highly profitable. There are widespread forgeries of especially valued artists, such as drawings originally by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Henri Matisse.

A special case of double forgery is the forging of Vermeer's paintings by Han van Meegeren, and in its turn the forging of Van Meegeren's work by his son Jacques van Meegeren.[3]

Criminal law


A forged police identification card used by a convicted terrorist.

England and Wales and Northern Ireland

In England and Wales and Northern Ireland, forgery is an offence under section 1 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which provides:

A person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person’s prejudice.[4]

"Instrument" is defined by section 8, "makes" and "false" by section 9, and "induce" and "prejudice" by section 10.

Forgery is triable either way. A person guilty of forgery is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years, or, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both.[5]

For offences akin to forgery, see English criminal law#Forgery, personation, and cheating.

The common law offence of forgery is abolished for all purposes not relating to offences committed before the commencement of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981.[6]

Scotland

Forgery is not an official offence under the law of Scotland, except in cases where statute provides otherwise.[7][8]

The Forgery of Foreign Bills Act 1803 was repealed in 2013.

Republic of Ireland

In the Republic of Ireland, forgery is an offence under section 25(1) of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001 which provides:

A person is guilty of forgery if he or she makes a false instrument with the intention that it shall be used to induce another person to accept it as genuine and, by reason of so accepting it, to do some act, or to make some omission, to the prejudice of that person or any other person.[9]

A person guilty of forgery is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years, or to a fine, or to both.[10]

Any offence at common law of forgery is abolished. The abolition of a common law offence of forgery does not affect proceedings for any such offence committed before its abolition.[11]

Except as regards offences committed before the commencement of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001 and except where the context otherwise requires, without prejudice to section 65(4)(a) of that Act, references to forgery must be construed in accordance with the provisions of that Act.[12]

Canada

Forgery is an offence under sections 366, 367 and 368 of the Canadian Criminal Code. The offence is a hybrid offence, subject to a maximum prison sentence of:

• if tried summarily: 6 months
• if tried on indictment: 10 years

United States

Further information: Crimes Act of 1790

Forgery is a crime in all jurisdictions within the United States, both state and federal.[1][2] Most states, including California, describe forgery as occurring when a person alters a written document "with the intent to defraud, knowing that he or she has no authority to do so."[13] The written document usually has to be an instrument of legal significance. Punishments for forgery vary widely. In California, forgery for an amount under $950[14] can result in misdemeanor charges and no jail time, while a forgery involving a loss of over $500,000 can result in three years in prison for the forgery plus a five-year "conduct enhancement" for the amount of the loss, yielding eight years in prison.[15] In Connecticut, forgery in the Third Degree, which is a class B misdemeanor[16] is punishable by up to 6 months in jail, a $1000 fine, and probation; forgery in the First Degree, which is a class C felony,[17] is punishable by a maximum 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000 fine, or both.[18]

Civil law

As to the effect, in the United Kingdom, of a forged signature on a bill of exchange, see section 24 of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882.

In popular culture

• The 1839 novel by Honoré de Balzac, Pierre Grassou, concerns an artist who lives off forgeries.[19]
• The Orson Welles documentary F for Fake concerns both art and literary forgery. For the movie, Welles intercut footage of Elmyr de Hory, an art forger, and Clifford Irving, who wrote an "authorized" autobiography of Howard Hughes that had been revealed to be a hoax. While forgery is the ostensible subject of the film, it also concerns art, film making, storytelling and the creative process.[20]
• The 1966 heist comedy film How to Steal a Million centers around Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) attempting to steal a fake Cellini made by her grandfather.[21]
• The 1964 children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory written by Roald Dahl revealed the "golden ticket" in Japan was a forgery.
• The 1972 novel by Irving Wallace, The Word concerns archaeological forgery, the finding and translation of a supposed lost gospel by James the Just, close relative of Jesus Christ, as part of a large project to be published as a new Bible that would inspire a Christian revival, but which is possibly a forged document.[22]
• The 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg, is based on the claims of Frank Abagnale, a con man who allegedly stole over $2.5 million through forgery, imposture and other frauds, which are dramatized in the film. His career in crime lasted six years from 1963 to 1969.[23] The veracity of most of Abagnale's claims has been questioned.[24]
• The graphic art novel The Last Coiner, authored by Peter M. Kershaw, is based on the exploits of the 18th century counterfeiters, the Cragg Vale Coiners, who were sentenced to execution by hanging at Tyburn.[25]

See also

Main article: Outline of forgery

• Art forgery
• Authentication
• J. S. G. Boggs American artist
• Counterfeiting
o coins
o currency
o medicine
• Digital signature forgery
o watches
o postage stamps
• Epigraphy
• False document
• Phishing
• Questioned document examination
• Replica
• Signature forgery
• United States Secret Service
• White-collar crime

References

1. United States v. Hunt, 456 F.3d 1255, 1260 (10th Cir. 2006) ("Historically, forgery was defined as the false making, with the intent to defraud, of a document which is not what it purports to be, as distinct from a document which is genuine but nevertheless contains a term or representation known to be false.") (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added); see generally, 10 U.S.C. § 923 ("Forgery"); 18 U.S.C. §§ 470–514 (counterfeiting and forgery-related federal offenses); 18 U.S.C. § 1543 ("Forgery or false use of passport").
2. "§ 19.71 S. Forgery". The Law Offices of Norton Tooby. Retrieved 2018-11-15.
3. Davies, Serena (2006-08-04). "The forger who fooled the world". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved 2019-04-29.
4. Legislation.gov.uk. Digitised copy of section 1.
5. The Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, sections 6(1) to (3)(a)
6. The Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, section 13
7. W J Stewart and Robert Burgess. Collins Dictionary of Law. HarperCollins Publishers. 1996. ISBN 0 00 470009 0. Pages 176 and 398.
8. Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia
9. Irish Statute Book. Digitised copy of section 25.
10. The Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001, section 25(2)
11. The Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001, sections 3(2) and (3)
12. The Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001, section 65(4)(b)
13. "California Legislative Information, Penal Code section 470". Retrieved 20 July 2017.
14. Brady, Katherine (November 2014). "California Prop 47 and SB 1310: Representing Immigrants" (PDF). Immigrant Legal Resource Center1. Retrieved 1 August 2017.
15. Couzens, J. Richard; Bigelow, Tricia A. (May 2017). "Felony Sentencing After Realignment" (PDF). California Courts. Retrieved 1 August 2017.
16. "Chapter 952 - Penal Code: Offenses". http://www.cga.ct.gov. Retrieved 2017-08-09.
17. "Chapter 952 - Penal Code: Offenses". http://www.cga.ct.gov. Retrieved 2017-08-09.
18. Norman-Eady, Sandra; Coppolo, George; Reinhart, Christopher (1 December 2006). "Crimes and Their Maximum Penalties". Office of Legislative Research. Connecticut General Assembly. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
19. Yeazell, Ruth Bernard (2008). Art of the Everyday: Dutch Painting and the Realist Novel. Princeton University Press. p. 88. ISBN 978-0691127262.
20. McBride, Joseph (2006). What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 245–250. ISBN 0813124107.
21. Casper, Drew (2011). Hollywood Film 1963-1976: Years of Revolution and Reaction. John Wiley & Sons. p. 1972. ISBN 978-1405188272.
22. Cawelti, John G. (1977). Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. University of Chicago Press. p. 281. ISBN 0226098672.
23. Wight, Douglas (2012). "Owning December". Leonardo DiCaprio: The Biography. John Blake Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-1857829570.
24. Lopez, Xavier (23 April 2021). "Could this famous con man be lying about his story? A new book suggests he is". WHYY. WHYY. PBS. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
25. "Telling the Coiners' story". BBC North Yorkshire. 3 June 2008.

Sources

• Cohon, Robert. Discovery & Deceit: archaeology & the forger's craft Kansas: Nelson-Atkins Museum, 1996
• Muscarella, Oscar. The Lie Became Great: the forgery of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, 2000
• "Imaginary Images" in Detecting the Truth: Fakes, Forgeries and Trickery at Library and Archives Canada

External links

• Bibliographies of archaeological forgeries, art forgeries etc
• Museum security mnetwork: sources of information on art forgery; with encyclopedic links
• Fakes and Forgeries on the Trafficking Culture website, University of Glasgow
• Academic Classification of Levels of Forgery on The Authentication in Art Foundation Website
• List of Caught Art Forgers on The Authentication in Art Foundation Website