Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1910-05-06

the criminal proceedings against them,
| and her husband, the late Charles Ham
ilton Paine of Boston, who amassed
a great fortune in copper stocks, were
guests OF the de Gatignys two years ago,
and, when they decided to make their
home in Paris, placed the selection of
| paintings for their art gallery In the
| Counts hands. The arrangement was
| that he was to have carte blanche, as
the Paines reposed explicit reliance upon
| his artistic taste and knowledge. The
Paines were to furnish the money which
he should find to be requisite to the pro-
curement of the best examples of great
art that could be obtained for, this ~eol
| lection. They drew their checks to the
| extent of something approaching a quar-
| ter of a million dollars. Now it turns
out that what the Count did was to
| take advantage of their generous and
| friendly confidence and fill their gallery
with forgeries.
The forging of paintings is a despica-
bic but profitable industry in which there
| are experts on both sides of the At
lantic, but seemingly it has been car
ried on upon a more audacious scale in
France than elsewhere Henri Roche
fort. the Partisan editor and art critic,
said the other day, 1.-Two thousand out
of the thousand five hundred Rem
brandts in America are forgerles." He
purpOsely spoke in the language of eX-
aggeratiOn. IN the first place nobody
has every claimed that the number of
Rembrandts in America is as large as
two thousand five hundred-or two thou
sander even one thousand. In the sec
Ond place if five hundred American Rem
brandts were genuine American would
have nearly all the genuine Rembrandts
in the world, for it is agreed by the
highest authorities that Doctor William
Bode, director of the Berlin Museum, was
approximately correct when he placed
the number of Rembrandts in existence
at five hundred and ninety-tiVe. Not
more than fifteen new pictures plausibly
accredited to the great master of chiaro-
scuro have been discovered since 1906,
when DR.. Bode published his compre-
hensive list What M. Rochefort desired
to emphasize by eXaggeratlOn was that
most of the paintings in America as
serted and believed by their owners to
be Rembrandts are spurious, and IN TINS
conclusion he is sustained by experts
on both sides of the Atlantic Assistant
Director Robinson of the Metropolitan
! Museum of Art says that the thirty
three Rembrandts exhibited in New
York during the Hudson-Fulton celebra-
| ton probably represent half the number
of Rembrandts owned in America, and
that of these thirtythree twenty-five
| are owned in New York. William Ord
| way Partridge, the sculptor, said the oth-
| err day, II understand that about fifty
| thousand COrOts have been imported INTO
this country. Is it not probable that at
| least fOrty-nine thousand are fOrgerlesF
1t is comparatively easy for technical
experts to counterfeit paintings so well
| that they will deceive all but the elect.
| So pseudo-poets temporarily have palmed
! themselves off as real poets-an annoy
ance in Tennyson's time which moved
| him to utter the plant that "all can
grow the flowers, now that all have got
the seed" Ruskin, so Northumberland
! tradition runs, trained technically eX-
! pert painter to initiate Turner with such
! success that he feared no one but
himself would be able to discriminate
the copies from the originals except for
his mark upon the canvases ndlcat-
ing that they were merely limitations:
Rochefort says that vast number OF
reputed Corots and Millets which have
been sold to rich Americans for tremen-
dous prices are bogus. He also says, eX-
| aggerating again to make his point en-
phatic, 81 have almost decided that Tur-
ner never existed. He could not have
painted all the works attributed to him
! if he had lived two hundred years.
| Rochefort says he had an American
friend who paid 100000 for collec-
ton of paintings in which there was not
| one genuine work.
| Mrs. Paine is convinced that the de
Gatignys sold her bogus antique furni-
ture as we'll as bogus paintings. She has
the sympathy and support of some of the
best art connoisseurs of Paris in her con-
tention, and may be able to prove her
case. If she does it will make swind-
| ling vendors of art objects less daring
| in the future than they have been in the
past AS for the rich Americans who
are reckless of their money and ambi-
tious to enrich their collections with gen
uine examples of the nest work of
the greatest geniuses in the world,
| whether Mrs. Paine succeeds or fails
| in her efforts to bring the de Gatignys to
| justice, they will be more cautious. 1t
| will not be so easy to dupe them now
that their eyes have been opened to the
| character of the game.