Fakes, fakes everywhere (ctd.)

March 17 2015

I saw yesterday, at a provincial auction house, a fake 18th Century drawing, purporting to be of a well-known literary figure. It had been fully catalogued as by the claimed artist (it was 'signed'), but had probably been made within the last few years or so, at the most. It had a cunningly vague label on the back, made using what appeared to be an old type writer. I think the intention was to fool the optimistic into thinking the drawing was an overlooked gem.

Normally I let these things go, but there appeared to be a number of drawings in the same sale that were labelled and framed in the same way, and made with a similarly dubious technique. So I informed the auction house staff, in the hope that anything that had come from the same source would be investigated further.

There are a growing number of fakes out there like this; trivial enough to appear to be innocuous, and not of any interest to the police - but real enough to make someone shifty some serious money. Caveat emptor...

Update - the drawing was withdrawn.

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