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December 12, 2007
Chicago's Forged Gauguin
Here's a lovely story from the Art Newspaper about a forged Gauguin sculpture currently at the Chicago Art Institute - and unlike the AP story, the Art Newspaper knows about how much the Art Institute paid.
So why was it that no one seems to have questioned the Gauguin? The sculpture appeared to be based on a tiny drawing of a faun sculpture in a sketchbook which the artist used in Martinique in 1887. A work entitled “Faun” was also listed in a Gauguin exhibition held at the Nunès and Fiquet gallery in Paris in 1917. These references are noted in Christopher Gray’s Gauguin sculpture catalogue (1963) and Merete Bodelsen’s authoritative study of Gauguin’s ceramics (1964).It seems that the Greenhalghs set out to recreate this missing sculpture. What is astonishing is that they were able to design and fire such a successful stoneware forgery, which had no obvious features to reveal it as a modern fake. Ms Howie, an experienced dealer, was originally captivated by the work: “We lived with it, and I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave us. It was a wonderful object.”
Like many successful forgers, the Greenhalgh family gave the experts what they were looking for - something missing that they could discover.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at December 12, 2007 8:09 AM