AMAZING ART FORGERIES

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1930, Page 11

AMAZING ART FORGERIES

MILLET’S PICTURES COPIED

ARTIST’S GRANDSON SELLS FAKES.

THOUSANDS OF BUYERS DUPED.. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Paris, May 5. The art world is thunderstruck by the revelation of a fraud by Jean Charles Millet, a grandson of the great artist J. F. Millet. For some time the Hood of pictures from Barbizoners (French impressionists) has been marked, and has given collectors cause for anxiety. Wealthy collectors recently paid Millet £2OOO for a picture said, to have been painted by Millet’s grandfather, and duly signed “J.F.M.” Only when an Ameriban buyer offered £6OOO was the genuineness of the pictures questioned. A grandson, who lives next door to the Barbizon Museum, then h.. le a complete confession. He said he had been accustomed in his early childhood to imitate his grandfather’s sketches, and had. acquired such skill that .finally it was almost impossible to tell his own product from his grandfather’s. He was thus tempted to add the initials “J.F.M,” and sell the pictures. As the business flourished he employed a professional painter named Cazot to produce oil paintings similar to his grandfather’s.' . . Cazot states that he was unaware that his pictures were being sold fraudulently. He was actually engaged on a Millet canvas when the police came to inquire.

The ease with which the faked Millet pictures sold suggested enlarging the operations to include Diaz, Corot, Daubigny, Monet, Degas and Cezanne. ■The output of such “masterpieces” was estimated at between 3000 and 4000 since 1923. The extent of the fraud will be known only when all the dupes come fopward. Probably the majority Of dupes will refuse, preferring to hide their errors, especially wealthy Americans.