Fakes, Copies &
Mistaken Identities
s o m e p r o b l e m s o f a r t at t r i b u t i o n
Melville holmes
A
recent article in the Fort Worth Star-Tele-
gram tells the story of an oil painting purchased by
a Texas collector in 2004 for $3,800. After picking it
up from a Dallas museum where it had been on loan
along with three others, he drove to Fort Worth to
show them to the directors of the Kimbell Art Museum. Only one caught their eye: an Italian church
interior signed “David Roberts” (1796-1864), a
prominent painter of architectural subjects. But this
rather exceptional piece didn’t fit with Roberts. The
freshness and confidence of the brushwork spoke to
the directors of another British artist, one of whose
works the museum already owned: Richard Parkes
Bonington (1802-1828). Through a set of fortuitous
circumstances their hunch proved correct. The signature was a forgery, added on top of the varnish. The
oil painting exactly matched a watercolor of the same
interior by Bonington. The Kimbell happily bought it
for an undisclosed sum “under $1 million.”
The monetary value of an artwork is tightly bound up
with the name of its maker and, with relatively few
exceptions; its ranking in the scale of historical and
artistic importance. The topmost tier is occupied by
household names: Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Leonardo, and Picasso, to name a few, and
any others who constitute the pride of the world’s
great museums and populate the art history texts.
At these altitudes the stakes are high. With recent
auction records at astronomical levels, the emergence and sale of a long lost Caravaggio would make
international headlines and amount to some serious
money indeed. Equally serious is the need to make
sure the name really goes with the picture. No museum director or collector relishes the thought of being
taken in by a forgery or what turns out not to be by
38 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
the master himself but an obscure follower.
There is a hierarchy to artistic celebrity and value
made up of major and minor masters. While a given
artist’s status may fluctuate according to the winds
of fashion, one constant remains. It’s all attached to
the artist’s name. If one peruses auction catalogs and
labels on museum walls, one finds a series of categories. At the pinnacle are “autograph” works, signed by
the artist and so well supported by historical documentation as to leave no doubt about their authenticity. Below this degree of certainty, however, the question of attribution becomes much more complicated
and open to scholarly debate. Many masterworks are
both unsigned and lacking adequate documentation.
In many cases there is enough evidence for art historians and connoisseurs to develop a persuasive case
for inclusion among an artist’s works. When there is
less convincing evidence pictures are often labeled
“attributed to.” Works not deemed quite worthy of
a particular master but which are similar to his or
her work will be described, in descending order, as
“workshop of,” “circle of,” “follower of,” “school of,”
and even lower down, “after” (i.e. a copy), and even
more vague, “French school,” “Munich school,” etc.
At the very bottom of the ladder is downright forgery, though this can sometimes get turned on its
head. One famous example is the case of Han van
Meegeren, who succeeded in duping experts and
even Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goering, with his fake Vermeers. Placed on trial for
allegedly selling national treasure to the enemy in the
latter instance, he had to prove that he was innocent
of that by producing one of his fakes at the trial, with
the result of becoming something of a folk hero.