Is It Real? Is It a Forgery? Does Anyone Even Know?

One of the joys of being an author is that you get to explore worlds you knew nothing about. It’s so interesting. Recently I’ve been immersed in the world of high-end art forgeries, and as usual am following every rabbit down every hole in sight.

In the process, I came across this lovely tidbit. This may well be the most belligerent copyright notice ever penned. It appeared in the colophon to an engraving series called Life of the Virgin, published in Nuremberg in 1511. Its author and the creator of the engravings, the great painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer, had good reason to fear forgers—he was a popular target.

Hold! You crafty ones, strangers to work, and pilferers of other men’s brains! Think not rashly to lay your thievish hands upon my works. Beware! Know you not that I have a grant from the most glorious Emperor Maximilian that not one throughout the imperial dominion shall be allowed to print or sell fictitious imitations of these engravings? Listen! And bear in mind that if you do so, through spite or through covetousness, not only will your goods be confiscated, but your bodies also placed in mortal danger.

 Now that’s a copyright notice! Loved that rabbit hole. But, as they say, wait—there’s more. Let’s talk about F For Fake.

 Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact.

 The last major film written, and directed by—and featuring—legendary director Orson Welles during his lifetime. Made in 1974, it is essentially a fast-paced rumination on truth, fakery and expertise, particularly with regards to authorship and authenticity within art.

 Originally, Welles was hired merely to narrate the film, to be directed by Francois Reichenbach. The subject was Elmyr de Hory, a professional art forger who boasted that he had sold thousands of paintings to galleries all around the world, with every expert who had examined them convinced they were the genuine article. He was the subject of a biography by Clifford Irving (who, during filming, was discovered to himself be a fraud, having published a biography of notoriously reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes that was based entirely on forgeries and faked evidence!).

 Reichenbach and his staff were horrified by this revelation since they had used Irving as a trusted source for a straight documentary about Hory, Welles, however, enjoyed this turn of events. He then made the entire film an exploration of fakery, that of Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving, the art galleries, Howard Hughes, Hollywood, mass media, Pablo Picasso, and of course his own tendency toward being a faker. After a while, it becomes unclear what is real and what's not... and whether, ultimately, that even matters.

 And now that we’re on the subject of Hory et al… Art forgery inspires awe and anger in equal measure. While galleries, dealers and collectors certainly don’t want fakes on their hands, it’s hard not to be impressed by painters who can imitate the greats so believably. Even with all the technology designed to verify artworks, there are still lots of convincing fakes still on display in museums around the world.

 Some of the most high-profile art forgers went on to become celebrities in their own right, with plenty of contemporary collectors still willing to knowingly pay thousands for counterfeits. Here are just a few…

JOHN MYATT

British artist John Myatt has gone down in history as the man behind “the biggest art fraud of the 20th century,”as Scotland Yard put it. He painted an estimated 200 forgeries, many of which were sold by some of the biggest auction houses in the world including Sotheby’s and Phillips. His career as a forger began after he started legitimately selling counterfeits, having placed an advert for “genuine fakes” in Private Eye. Though Myatt was honest to begin with, this changed when a regular customer named John Drewe revealed that Christie’s auction house had paid £25,000 for one of Myatt’s so-called “Albert Gleizes” paintings.

 From then on, he forged works by artists that included Chagall, Giacometti, and Matisse. Myatt ended his partnership with Drewe in 1993, growing tired of the unsavory way in which Drewe handled their finances. Both were eventually arrested two years later, when Drewe’s angry ex-partner told the police what they had done. As he cooperated and helped to convict Drewe, Myatt was only sentenced to a year in prison, for which he served just four months. Since his release in 1999, Myatt has continued to paint, working on commission, and marking each piece as a fake.

TOM KEATING

Tom Keating claimed to have faked two thousand paintings by more than 100 different artists, including Rembrandt and Samuel Palmer. The British art restorer and forger declared that his counterfeits were motivated by his socialist politics rather than financial gain. He wrote in his book The Fake’s Progress that: “It seemed disgraceful to me how many [artists] had died in poverty. All their lives they had been exploited by unscrupulous dealers and then, as if to dishonor their memory, these same dealers continued to exploit them in death.” In his eyes, his fakes were an attack on the gallery system, intended to fool the experts, and break the industry.

 After The Times published an article in 1970 accusing him of his crimes, Keating confessed to his forgeries, and was arrested in 1979 along with his former lover and accomplice Jane Kelly. Though she had to serve time in prison after pleading guilty, Keating escaped a sentence after being severely injured in a motorcycle accident, later developing bronchitis in hospital. The charges against him were dropped, as he looked unlikely to survive, although his health did improve and he lived until 1984. Keating’s works still sell for thousands of pounds, and in 2005, The Guardian reported counterfeits of his own forgeries were selling on the market for between £5,000 and £10,000.

HAN VAN MEEGEREN

Han van Meegeren was a Dutch artist who turned to forgery after his peers criticized his own work for its unoriginality. In response, he decided to prove his talent by creating and selling a piece said to be by Johannes Vermeer and created a ‘new’ Vermeer called Supper at Emmaus in 1937. It was widely admired by critics, with famous art expert Abraham Bredius calling it “the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft.” The painting was then bought by Rotterdam’s prestigious Boijmans Gallery.

 Though van Meegeren had initially planned to reveal that he was the true creator, he instead continued forging, creating six new Vermeer works which made him an estimated sixty million dollars, according to The Telegraph. As well as selling to world famous museums, he also counted Nazi leader Hermann Göring as a customer. This ultimately led to van Meegeren’s downfall, as he was arrested for selling a valuable piece of Dutch cultural property to the Nazis. Rather than face treason charges, van Meegeren admitted the work was fake (and created a new one on demand for the court to ascertain that he could). He became known as “the man who swindled Göring,” as well as the world’s greatest art forger.

ELMYR DE HORY

Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory started life as a forger in Paris after World War II. The idea came to him after selling a pen-and-ink drawing to a British woman who mistakenly believed it to be an original Picasso. He went on to sell a thousand paintings to galleries across the world, including forged Picassos, as well as counterfeit works purported to be by Degas, Matisse, and Modigliani. Though Hory did attempt to kickstart his own art career, the money was nothing compared to the huge profits he had become accustomed to from his fakes.

 Eventually galleries grew suspicious of him and, in time, art dealers and curators began realizing his works were forgeries. Having eluded the police for some time, Hory returned to his Ibiza home and was sent to prison for two months in 1968. This was for a number of crimes, including homosexuality, which was still illegal at the time. However, his forgery couldn’t be proved, as there was no proof of whether any of his counterfeits were created on Spanish soil. He died by suicide in 1976 shortly after the Spanish government agreed to extradite him to France to stand trial for fraud. Many of Hory’s works are still in circulation today.

WOLFGANG BELTRACCHI

Wolfgang Beltracchi started painting in the styles of renowned artists as a teenager, learning from his father who was an art restorer and church muralist. However, rather than creating copies of existing pieces, the German painter started making new works and selling them at flea markets. During the 1970s and 80s, Beltracchi turned his attention to French Modernists and German Expressionists, as it was easier to find the materials these artists would have used. His paintings in the style of Campendonk would become his specialty, and he even managed to fool leading scholar Andrea Firmenich, who featured some of Beltracchi’s paintings in the Campendonk catalogue raisonné he was compiling.

 Many of his works sold for extremely high prices at auction, like his Campendonk painting Landscape with Horses which actor Steve Martin paid $860,000 for in 2004. He also sold a piece called The Forest (2) — painted in the style of Ernst — to a Parisian art gallery for roughly $7 million. Beltracchi was found out in 2008, after some of his Campendonks were tested by a forensic specialist, revealing pigments that were not in use during the times attributed to the works. He was sentenced to six years in prison but secured an early release, agreeing to paint only under his own name from then on.

 Like they say…. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

But what amazes me mostly is the idea of museums, art associations, collectors, and galleries all potentially having forgeries in their collections. And… do they really even want to know? There are probably more than anyone knows, and they’re all hiding in plain sight.

 Tell me that’s not a stunning backdrop for a mystery! You know it is… and that’s what I’m doing right now.