Art forgery
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Art forgery refers to creating and, in particular, selling works of art that are falsely attributed to be work of another, usually more famous, artist. Art forgery is extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged artwork much simpler.
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Fictional art forgery
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Film
- Orson Welles directed a film about art forgery called F for Fake.
- How to Steal a Million stars Audrey Hepburn joining a burglar (Peter O'Toole) to prevent technical examinations on a Cellini sculpture that would expose both her grandfather and father as art forgers (the latter working on Cézanne and van Gogh).
- In Incognito (1998, directed by John Badham), an expert in forging famous artists' paintings takes up a job of forging Rembrandt, but is framed for murder after meeting a beautiful Rembrandt expert.
- In the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, Pierce Brosnan's millionaire character plays cat-and-mouse about a stolen (and then, on his initiative, forged) Monet painting with an insurance investigator (Rene Russo).
- In the film The Moderns the lead character, artist Nick Hart, forges several paintings, including a Cézanne, for his art dealer. These are sold to a wealthy collector who, upon being informed that they are fakes, destroys them in the presence of company.
- The 2001 documentary film about international art forgery, The Forgery, (Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo) and Dutch art forger Geert Jan Jansen.
- In the Polish comedy Vinci two thieves are commissioned to steal da Vincis's Lady with an Ermine. One of them does not want the precious painting to disappear from Czartoryski Museum and orders a forgery of it.
- In the 2014 film The Forger, the title character, played by John Travolta, attempts to forge a well known piece of art.
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TV series
- White Collar is a series about Neal Caffrey, a convicted art forger who starts working with the FBI.
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Literature
- Tom Ripley is involved in an artwork forgery scheme in several of Patricia Highsmith's crime novels, most notably Ripley Under Ground (1970), in which he is confronted by a collector who correctly suspects that the paintings sold by Tom are forgeries. The novel was adapted to film in 2005, and the 1977 film The American Friend is also partially based on the novel.
- In Robertson Davies' 1985 novel What's Bred in the Bone, protagonist Francis Cornish studies with an accomplished art forger and is inspired to produce two paintings which are subsequently accepted by experts as original 16th-century artworks.
- In Russell H. Greenan's novel It Happened in Boston?, the protagonist is a madman, a serial killer, and an astonishingly good artist in the Old Master style, fooled into creating a painting that becomes accepted as a da Vinci.
- The Art Thief, an international best-selling novel by professor of art history Noah Charney, features a series of forgeries and art heists.
- In Clive Barker's 1991 novel Imajica, the protagonist, John Furie Zacharias, known as "Gentle," makes his living as a master art forger.
- William Gaddis' acclaimed 1955 novel The Recognitions centers on the life of an art forger and prodigal Calvinist named Wyatt Gwyon and his struggle to find meaning within art. The novel itself discusses the process and history of forgery in depth as well as the possible artistic merit of forged paintings.
- David Mitchell's novel Ghostwritten features a section set in the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, and follows a crime syndicate that steals artwork from the museum to sell on the black market, replacing the originals with high quality forgeries.
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See also
- Archaeological forgery
- Authenticity in art
- Forgery
- Museum of Art Fakes, Vienna
- Works of Art with Contested Provenance
Famous forgeries
- Etruscan terracotta warriors
- Flower portrait
- Michelangelo's 'Cupid'
- Rospigliosi Cup sometimes referred to as the Cellini Cup
- Samson Ceramics forgeries/reproductions
Known art forgers and dealers of forged art
- Giovanni Bastianini, Italian forger of renaissance sculptures
- William Blundell, Forged Australian painters
- Yves Chaudron, France - forged Mona Lisa
- Zhang Daqian, forged Chinese art
- Alceo Dossena, Italian sculptor
- John Drewe, sold the work of John Myatt
- Shaun Greenhalgh, British forger
- Guy Hain, forged Rodin bronzes
- Eric Hebborn, British-born forger of old masters
- Elmyr de Hory, Hungarian-born painter of Picassos
- Geert Jan Jansen, Dutch painter Karel Appel recognized one of Jansen's forgeries as his own work.
- Tom Keating, British art restorer and forger who claimed to have faked more than 2,000 paintings by over 100 different artists
- Mark A. Landis, American forger who donated his works to many American museums
- Fernand Legros, purveyor of forged art
- Han van Meegeren, Dutchman who painted Vermeers
- John Myatt, British painter, created forgeries for John Drewe
- Ely Sakhai, who sold Gauguin's Vase de Fleurs twice
- Jean-Pierre Schecroun, forged Picasso
- Emile Schuffenecker, French forger with Otto Wacker
- David Stein, U.S. art dealer and painter
- Tony Tetro, prolific U.S. forger
- The Spanish Forger, French forger of medieval miniatures
- William J. Toye, forged and sold the work of Clementine Hunter
- Eduardo de Valfierno, art dealer who worked with forger Yves Chaudron
- Otto Wacker, German purveyor of fake Van Goghs
- Kenneth Walton, prosecuted for selling forged paintings on eBay
- Earl M[arshawn] Washington, forger of prints that he attributed to a grandfather, allegedly named "E[arl] M[ack] Washington".
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