The allure of the art world is built on a foundation of authenticity, of connecting with a masterpiece crafted by a celebrated hand. Yet, throughout history, a shadow industry has thrived, populated by cunning individuals who have created imitations so convincing they have fooled experts, museums, and collectors alike. These forgeries are not mere copies but works of deceptive brilliance, often revealing as much about the vulnerabilities of the art market as they do about the forgers themselves.
Han van Meegeren: The Man Who Fooled the Nazis
Perhaps the most famous art forger of all time is Han van Meegeren, a Dutch painter who operated during the 1930s and 1940s. A frustrated artist whose own work was dismissed by critics as uninspired, he turned to forgery as a form of revenge and a path to riches. His targets were the revered masters of the Dutch Golden Age, particularly Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer was an ideal subject for forgery because his known body of work was small and his early years as an artist were a mystery.
Van Meegeren’s genius lay not in simply replicating existing paintings, but in creating entirely new works “by” Vermeer. He meticulously researched and mastered the techniques of the 17th century. He used genuine, old canvases and ground his own pigments from raw materials to ensure they were period correct. To replicate the centuries of aging and cracking that oil paint undergoes, he mixed his paints with phenol formaldehyde, a plastic like substance. After baking the canvas to harden the paint and create realistic cracks, he rubbed black ink into the fissures to simulate the accumulation of dirt over time.
His masterpiece of deception was The Supper at Emmaus, a painting he claimed was an early Vermeer. He sold the painting for a fortune and continued to create and sell more “Vermeers.” His scheme unraveled in a truly spectacular fashion at the end of World War II. An Allied art commission discovered one of his forgeries, Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery, in the collection of Nazi leader Hermann Göring. The trail led them to van Meegeren, who was arrested and charged with collaborating with the Nazis for selling a Dutch national treasure to the enemy. To escape the charge of treason, he confessed to being a forger. To prove his claim, he painted another “Vermeer” under the supervision of the court, a final act that secured his reputation as one of history’s most audacious art criminals.
Elmyr de Hory: The Chameleon Forger
While van Meegeren focused on old masters, Elmyr de Hory was a master of the modern. A Hungarian born artist, he created an estimated one thousand forgeries of 20th century masters like Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani. De Hory’s forgeries were so convincing that many of them still hang in private and public collections today. His skill was not in photographic reproduction but in capturing the spirit and style of an artist. He understood their brushstrokes, color palettes, and compositional tendencies so well that he could create new works that felt authentic.
De Hory’s deceptions were aided by a shady network of dealers who created false provenances and sold his work to unsuspecting galleries and collectors around the world. He often took genuine but lesser known paintings and simply scraped off the top layer to paint his fakes on an aged canvas. His prolific output and ability to impersonate a wide range of artists made him a legend. His story was immortalized in the book Fake! by Clifford Irving and in Orson Welles’s documentary F for Fake. De Hory’s ultimate fate remains a source of some mystery and debate, as he died in Ibiza in 1976 shortly before facing extradition charges.
Wolfgang Beltracchi: The Modern Master of Deception
Wolfgang Beltracchi is a contemporary forger who may be the most successful of all time. For over 30 years, he and his wife Helene fooled the art world with hundreds of paintings in the style of over 50 different artists, from German Expressionists to Surrealists. Unlike other forgers, Beltracchi did not copy existing paintings. Instead, he created new, plausible “lost” works by artists like Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk, and Fernand Léger.
Beltracchi’s forgeries were brilliant because they were not only stylistically accurate but also came with elaborate, fabricated backstories. He and his wife created a fictional provenance, claiming the paintings came from Helene’s grandfather, who supposedly hid them from the Nazis. They even doctored old photographs of Helene posing in period dress to suggest a long family history with the collection. Their downfall came not from a stylistic flaw, but from a forensic one. A pigment known as titanium white, which was not in use during the time a forged Campendonk was supposedly painted, was discovered in the work, unraveling their entire scheme. Beltracchi was sentenced to six years in prison but has since been released and has even become a celebrated artist in his own right, selling his own “genuine” works.
John Myatt and John Drewe: The Two-Man Operation
The case of John Myatt and his accomplice John Drewe is a testament to the power of a fake backstory. John Myatt was a struggling art teacher who, to make ends meet, began creating “genuine fakes” and advertised them in a magazine. He was clear about the fact that they were not original works. However, he met John Drewe, a con man who saw an opportunity for a lucrative fraud.
Drewe was the brains behind the operation. He didn’t create the paintings, but he was a master of forging documents. He systematically manipulated art archives, adding false provenances to make Myatt’s fakes appear to have an illustrious history. He created fake gallery stamps and altered auction catalogs. Myatt painted over 200 forgeries, using common household materials like emulsion paint and even K-Y Jelly. Despite the low-tech materials, Drewe’s elaborate backstories fooled major auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Myatt was eventually caught and confessed, leading to the arrest of Drewe. Since his release, Myatt has rebranded himself as an artist who openly creates “genuine fakes” of famous paintings, a remarkable turn of events for a man who once orchestrated one of the largest art frauds of the 20th century.
These stories of famous art forgeries illustrate the complexities of the art world. They show how a combination of artistic skill, a deep understanding of art history, and a talent for deception can exploit the very systems designed to protect authenticity. Ultimately, these forgers remind us that in the world of high art, as in life, things are not always what they appear to be.