Émile Schuffenecker: (1851-1934) French

Implicated with Wacker in the van Gogh fakes affair.

One independent theory is proposed by Ben Landais, a Frenchman based in the Netherlands and his colleague Antonio de Robertis, which has caused considerable controversy in the art world. It concerns the Yasuda "Sunflowers" painted by Vincent van Gogh, in Arles in 1889 and suggests that it is a fake.

In a booklet published by Mr Landais, he claims that the picture is not by Van Gogh at all but is in fact a fake and the creation of Emile Schuffenecker, its owner, who exhibited it at Bernheim in June of 1901.

It has never been truly established however whether he actually produced any forgeries at all?

Schuffenecker

Self portrait

Earl M. Washington: (1862-1952) African-American

Print forger and expert woodcut artist who it's alledged, used the designs of other artists to create new engraved blocks which would turn up as great new 'finds.'

Ken Martens who is an attorney and print collector from Canada believes that the prints of Earl M. Washington have no historical significance but are rather more likely the production of a young man in Michigan who is trying to deceive buyers that the prints were produced in the early part of the 20C by his great grandfather!

Earl M. Washington

Woodcut

Icilio Federico Joni: (1866-1946) Italian

Joni was k nown as the prince of Sienese fakers and specialized in faking Renaissance and Old Master paintings.

Joni was so good that Old Master experts have called him one of the art world’s most spectacularly inventive forgers.

Much of his success as a forger was due to the fact that he imitated either the works of lesser painters such as Sano di Pietro or the undistinguished works of more famous artists, which could deceive even the best connoisseur.

It is widely believed that he was responsible for a Madonna and Child with Angels supposedly by Sano di Pietro in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection (Exposed in 1948), a Triptych in the Courtauld Institute Gallery and a Madonna & Child, Saint Maria Maddalena and Saint Sebastiano in the style of Neroccio di Bartolomeo Landi, in the Lehman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Federico Joni

Joseph van der Veken: (1872 - 1964)  Belgian

Joseph van der Veken was the official art restorer to the Royal Museums in Belgium and considered to be one of the forefathers of restoration of old masters in Belgium. He is now better associated with a fake painting scam!

The production of 'Mary Magdalen' that had been long attributed to the Flemish artist Hans Memling (1430-1494) Van der Valken was also accused of faking many other Flemish Primitives during his lifetime and it was later to be proven that indeed the Memling was a fabrication, a fake created in the 1920s.  According to Christina Ceulemans who was a department head of the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium's Artistic Heritage, like Van Meegeren, van der Valken also sold a painting, the 'Mary Magdalen panel,' to Herman Goering during the second world war, after which it disappeared.

Like a bad penny, it turned up again in 2004, when a Scandinavian man took the picture in to be appraised. Ceulemans said that Van der Veken, had worked creating commissioned copies of art and that in this case he had scraped an authentic 15th century panel down and painted his own old master, complete with craquelure.

Ironically, van der Valken finally got his own posthumous exhibition, "Fake / Not Fake: Restorations, Reconstructions, Forgeries," at the Groeninge Museum in Bruges, Belgium.

Giorgio De Chirico  (1888-1978)

Greek- Italian pre surrealist.

Produced backdated "self-forgeries" to profit from his earlier success and as an act of retribution for the critical preference for his early work.

He was also beleived to have occasionally signed fakes of his own works for profit.

Giorgio De Chirico

Johann Georg Paul Fischer: (1680-1759)

Johann Georg Paul Fischer was court painter and restorer to the Duke of Bavaria who 'modernised' old master works such as those by Albrecht Dürer to be more in keeping with the then acceptable idiom. Of note, the Paumgartner family altarpiece (now in the Alte Pinakithek, Munich) Fischer reworked the side panel which was painted by Albrecht Dürer during the the Northern Renaissance period between about 1498 and 1504. Rather than just restoring the work, he obliterated the saint’s attributes, substituting a horse and landscape for the dark ground that Durer had painted. He then added a helmet on the knight’s cap, which was Fischer making use of other Dürer motives. (See right)

Johann was the son of an engraver and originally a pupil of German portraitist Heinrich Ramberg, to whom he apprenticed and assisted in his portrait work. Coming to England in about 1810, he worked mainly in London and executed portraits of the English aristocracy and nobles, including Queen Victoria and Queen Charlotte. Best known now for his portrait miniatures.

Altered Durer Panel

Alceo Dossena: (1878-1937) Italian

Dossena didn't set out to copy sculptures but just happened to be so adept at using the techniques of the Greek and Renaissance sculptors that many of his works were bought by unknowing collectors and museum curators who were convinced that they were authentic!

This was principally down to his dealer Alfredo Fasoli who marketed them as priceless antiquities.

Dossena successfully defended himself at his trial and was acquitted of the charges set against him claiming that he'd been unaware that his dealer was selling his work under false pretences.

Alceo Dossena

Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) Dutch

Han van Meegeren, was charged with having sold a Dutch national treasure in the form of a Vermeer painting which later turned out to be a fake, to German military leader Hermann Goering. Van Meegeren defended himself in court by demonstrating that he had painted the Vermeer masterpiece himself.
He also brilliantly forged paintings of some of the world's most famous artists including; Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Peter Borch.

His story is exceptionally well documented and unecessary to repeat here.

Han van Meegeren

Jean Charles Millet and Eugene Cazot

 Jean Charles Millet,  32, of Barbizon, France, was the chubby grandson of  French artist Jean Francois Millet.  Jean Charles was thrown into jail in Melun and charged in May 1930 with the forging  an unknown number of presumed original of Millet paintings.  French justice moves slowly however and  they did not come to trial till 1935!

Charges and counter charges followed each other around in a circle until the whole judicial system got themselves into a mess and reverted to throwing Millet into jail for passing dud cheques!

Millet's Grandson  had started his career as dealer in forged paintings many years ago when he took one of his grandfather's genuine but damaged paintings to Paul  Cazot, a one time house painter and an unknown and struggling artist, to be repaired.

Obviously, Cazot did his job much too well because here started a life of crime in which countless numbers of forgeries were re created including works by Monet,  Corots, Degas, Daumier, Sisley and Pissarro. Some 6,000 is one claim.

To Artist Cazeau's canvases Grandson Millet then affixed his grandfather's initials which was a simple affair as his grandfather had a liking to use a copper stencil! He then solicited the help of Paris busker Rudolfo Perez y Montalbo whose credential came in the name. He played the part of an art connoisseur who backed up Millets claim that forged works were indeed legitimate works of art by his grandfather to prospective purchasers.

This included the  Millet Museum at Barbizon who bought a whole collection of fakes!

They came unstuck however when a French businessman and collector named Michaux discovered that a Millet painting for which he had paid 150,000 francs was a forgery and when confronted by the police, Millet confessed.

His defence in court was that he only sold fake works of art to Englishmen and Americans. They were fair game as they knew nothing about art! Pesumably so as one of their greatest coups was selling a fake Millet called The Binders to the Edinburgh Museum for a million and a half francs ($97,410) back then.

Dismissively, the director of the Edinburgh Museum insisted that his picture could not possibly be a fake but was in for a rude awakening!

In true Keating fashion Millets response was; "Scratch the gate in the painting and you will find a cow underneath."

Guess what?

Otto Wacker: (1898-1976) German

Otto Wacker was a notorious German art dealer and Berlin cabaret performer and the faker of at least 33 previously unknown Vincent van Gogh canvases that were supposedly painted 35 years before they were found.

In 1932 Wacker was charged with fraud and after an appeal, was sentenced to 19 months in prison.

Otto Wacker

The Spanish Forger: Active late 19th early 20 C.

A so called unidentified forger who was responsible for producing a vast number of forgeries of medieval miniatures.

Christian Goller: (B 1974) German

Art Faker

Faker of a work supposedly painted by Matthias Grünewald. The work was subsequently reattributed. Cleveland Museum of Art' paid US$1 million

Guy Hain: (20C) French

On January 17th 1997, Guy Hain, nicknamed "the Duke of Burgundy, a well-known French bronze dealer appeared before a court in Lure, central France, under charges accusing him of having produced thousands of faked sculptures which eventually were sold as originals of Rodin, Renoir, Maillol, Camille Claudel, Carpeaux, Barye, Fremiet, Mène and other sculptors. 

The French art forger who produced  a large number of fake bronze sculptures, the most famous pretending to be by Rodin, was sentenced to four years in jail on June 28, 1997 but served only 18 months. He was to be rearrested 2002. This time evidence collected by Dijon police department consisted of 1,100 copies of works of 98 different French sculptors. The prosecutor asked for five years in prison and FFr2 million fine!

The faking scam is said to be worth more than $60 million.

It's is estimated that he produced something like 6,000 copies beyond those that the police had previously confiscated. Only one-third of the copies have ever been traced

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