By Arthur Tompkins, ARCA Trustee and Lecturer
On Saturday 4 October 2015 an article appeared
in the online edition of The New Zealand Herald, a national newspaper in New
Zealand, about two forgeries by the well-known forger Elmyr de Hory, coming up
for public auction.
The article ran under images of one of the
forgeries alongside a genuine Monet:
The article said:
Two "Monet" paintings by a legendary art forger have
surfaced at an Auckland auction. ... While Monet originals fetch millions, the
two fakes will have reserves of only $1000 each when they go under the hammer
at Cordy's auction house on Tuesday.
"They are colourful and nice paintings, but you don't look at
them and think, 'Boy, that's an amazing masterpiece'," said auctioneer
Andrew Grigg.
"They don't look like a real Monet - the detail, the quality
of the originals would be just absolutely amazing."
The article described how the two paintings
were said to have been purchased from de Hory by one Ken Talbot:
Retired London bookmaker Ken Talbot, ... owned more than 400 de Hory
works that adorned every wall of his plush Regents Park townhouse.
Now, an Auckland descendent who inherited two items from him is
selling two "Claude Monet" paintings.
A member of the ARCA family, Penny Jackson, Director
of the Tauranga Art Gallery here in New Zealand, first spotted the article. The link to the article then went to curator and art fraud specialist Colette Loll who attended courses at the
inaugural ARCA Postgraduate program in 2009, and
is the founder and director of Art Fraud Insights (http://www.artfraudinsights.com.
Ms. Loll immediately sent the article on to Mr. Forgy.
Closing the circle, Mark Forgy then emailed
the auctioneers, Cordy’s in Auckland, New Zealand. He said to them:
“Please
be aware that Talbot himself was a con man who established a robust cottage
industry of fabricating phony works by de Hory. I write about Talbot in my book
‘The Forger's Apprentice : Life with the World's Most Notorious Artist’. I was
de Hory's friend, personal assistant and am his sole legal heir. I authenticate
his works. I assure you that the painting you intend to auction in the manner
of Claude Monet is NOT by de Hory.
I have added this bogus de Hory to scores of others I've harvested from
online auction sites.
Mark later commented:
When
I said that Talbot started a cottage industry of fabricating phony works by
Elmyr, he wasn't the painter of them. Talbot had others do the fake Elmyrs. I
suspect they came from some Asian source, but I can't be certain.
The next day, on the morning of the auction, Tuesday
7 October, news came through that Cordy’s had commendably and immediately withdrawn
the two paintings from sale. Under
the headline ‘Auction House Pulls Paintings When Told Forgeries Faked’, Mark
Forgy is quoted in the follow-up article in the New Zealand Herald:
"Talbot fabricated an oft-told story that he acquired
hundreds of works by Elmyr in exchange for unpaid loans. All this is just
nonsense," Forgy said yesterday. Forgy now monitors online auction sites
for fake de Hory works and has added the latest pair to the collection.
He said the irony of the famous faker himself being copied
"is never lost on me".
"The subject of others forging his works came up only one
time. We both contemplated that for a moment and then laughed at the
far-fetched notion," he said.
Auctioneer Andrew Grigg confirmed their withdrawal from today's
antique and art sale.
"Of course it is never our intention to deceive and we were
not aware that the faker's works were faked," he said.
So, within a few short days of the initial
article being published online, ARCA's network was instrumental in helping to
ensure that these forgeries of de Hory’s forgeries of two "Monets" were not
wrongly sold to an unsuspecting buyer who might have purchased them because
they were, as it initially seemed, ‘genuine’ forgeries.
Mark Forgy, reflecting on how this all
unfolded, comments:
I
think the issue of "fake fakes" merits attention in that it speaks to
the deeply flawed art market. It brings art fraud to another level of criminal
inventiveness. More alarmingly, we see a marketplace that incentivizes such
activity for the lack of regulation of the art trade. The loopholes in the
safety net (if one exists) are welcoming portals for anyone intent on
committing larceny. One inescapable irony is that art never seems to gather as
much attention as when its authenticity is questioned, and through this
examination process these fraudsters hold up a mirror, showing us who we are as
a society, our values, and how we view art. So, in an unintended way, they
become our social conscience. No, there's no lack of irony here.
Ironies all round indeed ...
art forgery,Mark Forgy
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art forgery,Mark Forgy
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