PICTURE FORGERIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2603, 3 February 1904, Page 72

PICTURE FORGERIES.

DEXOVON ADA3I : SAIC BOUGH : MOXTIOELTJ. The art-forger's trioks are exposed in Mr Spiermann'a article in tho Magazine oi Art for December. The following passage relates personal experiences of the writer: — The further from tho capital — London, Paris, Bc-'-lin — the bolder is the fabricator. Two pictures were shown me within a month.

One, which wae sent specially from Buenos Ayres, was a large, highly-finished, erclntecturally drawn, photographic sort of oil picture representing the Houses of Parliament at Westminster, seen from th© Thames, evidently done from a photographs not im-kilfully, and signed at length "John Rui-kin!" — whose every canon and practice it teemed to violate. The owner wrote that he knew my book on Ruskin, and would trust to my opinion if I would be kind enough to give it.

The othe-r was a large female full-length portrait of the early mid-Victorian period, extremely laboured, and in its way not unsuccessful. It was signed "John Everett Millais." In neither case could a worse shot havo been made ; yet each work had found a purchaser, half sceptic, it is true-, and half b°h-ever.

Quite recently a large and extreme-ly able imitation of Mr Petea- Graham's work was sold by the man who painted it for £12, and was immediately re-sold, and by tlm time haG probably reached hundreds.

The late Denovan Adam, too, is a favourite subject of imitation, and the pictures that now bear his name, unjustly fathered on him, are -said to rival in the North the numerous forged pictures of Sam Bough or the tube-squeezed pictures of Monticelli.