MANY ARE FRAUDS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18831, 20 March 1931, Page 11

MANY ARE FRAUDS.

ACCEPTED OLD MASTERS. Dr A. P. Laurie, professor of chemistry in the Royal Academy, believes that many famous pictures long treasured as Rembrants may be the work of lesser painters or of clever forgers. He claims that microphotography can detect “fakes,” says the “Daily Mail.” Dr. Laurie pointed out in a lecture to the Academy art students at Burlington House that a painter, like Rembrandt, who showed his brush work very distinctly, had his own “handwriting” with his brush, and could thus be identified. To demonstrate this Dr. Laurie showed lantern-slide microphotographs of portions of pictures by Rembrandt or attributed to Rembrandt. The magnification brought into very clear relief the characteristically strong qualities of Rembrandt’s brushwork. It also revealed the most un-Rembrandtish brushwork of certain pictures which had, until faijly recently, passed as Rembrandts. “ The time has come,” said Dr. Laurie, “for a thorough revision of the list of ‘accepted’ Rembrandts, and microphotography would prove a most valuable aid in such an investigation.

“I believe it would be found that certin pictures painted by Karel Fabritius, Flinck, 801, and probably Drost, are among ‘accepted’ Rembrandts.” Dr. Laurie declared: “I think it would also be found that there was a period during Rembrandt’s successful time At Amsterdam when he was turning out pictures with the help of his pupils, and that in the first half of the eighteen century there was a very skilful forger of Rembrandt’s in the master’s later style.”

Remarking that he knew very well ■where the real Rembrandts were, Dr. Laurie declared, amid laughter, that wild horses would not drag from him the names of the galleries or collections.

In conversation with a “Daily Mail” reporter he said he was not prepared to say whether many works accepted as those of other great masters were likely to be forgeries.

“It is too dangerous,” he said. sides, I have only concentrated on Rembrandt. But I do think there may be found to be a lot of humbug about El Greco.”