Journal
Notes on art forgery, provenance and authentication.
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John Myatt, John Drewe, and the Forgery of Provenance Itself
The paintings were good, not great. What made this the most damaging art fraud of the 20th century was a con man who forged the paper trail inside the Tate's own archives.
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Mark Landis: The Forger Who Never Broke the Law
For nearly three decades he handed fake Picassos and Disney sketches to museum staff for free, dressed as a Jesuit priest in mourning. No sale ever took place — so no crime ever did either.
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How a 165-Year-Old Gallery Sold $80 Million in Fake Pollocks
Knoedler & Company survived the Civil War, two World Wars, and the Great Depression. It didn't survive a decade of selling Abstract Expressionist forgeries out of a garage in Queens.
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Eric Hebborn: The Forger Who Wrote the Manual
He fooled the British Museum, the Met, and dozens of Old Master dealers for two decades, was never once prosecuted, and then published a step-by-step handbook on how he did it.
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Elmyr de Hory and the Business of Being Believed
A Hungarian émigré sold well over a thousand fake Matisses, Modiglianis, and Renoirs to museums and dealers on five continents — by mastering the market, not just the brush.
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The Forger Who Fooled Göring: Han van Meegeren
A failed Dutch painter forged six 'lost' Vermeers, sold one to Hermann Göring, and then had to prove his own guilt in court to avoid a death sentence for treason.