A museum in southern France dedicated to painter Etienne Terrus has discovered that more than 80 works in its collection are fakes. Local police are now investigating an art forgery ring specialising in Catalan painters. 
 
 Suspicion that the paintings, watercolors and sketches were fake was first sparked by art historian Eric Forcada, entrusted with overseeing the Terrus collection during a renovation of the small museum in the artist’s hometown of Elne. 
 
 A key detail was that some of the buildings in the paintings were built after Terrus’s death, local radio station “France Bleu” reported. 
 
 The museum assembled a committee of experts to inspect the works, which concluded that 82 of them had not been painted by Terrus. 
 
 The forged works are currently being housed at the Elne police station. The police investigation is also looking into trafficked paintings by other artists throughout the region. 
 
 Terrus, who was a close friend to artists Henri Matisse and Aristide Maillol, died in 1922. 
 
 The museum, which is run by City Hall, purchased the works in question over a 20-year period between 1990 and 2010. They are thought to have spent around 160,000 euros on the works. 
 
 The museum has filed a case against X, a French custom which puts pressure on the authorities to seek out the culprits. ||||| A state-owned French art museum has discovered that more than half of its collection consists of worthless fakes and experts fear that other public galleries may also be stuffed with forgeries. 
 
 An art historian raised the alarm after noticing that paintings attributed to Etienne Terrus showed buildings that were only constructed after the artist’s death in 1922. 
 
 Experts confirmed that 82 of the 140 works displayed at the Terrus museum in Elne, the artist’s birthplace in southern France, were fakes. 
 
 Many of the forged oil paintings, watercolours and drawings were bought with £140,000 of municipal funds over the past few decades. Others were given to the museum by two local groups that raised money to buy them by appealing for donations. Some were bequeathed by a private collector. 
 
 Yves Barniol, the mayor of Elne, near the Spanish border, said: “It’s a catastrophe. I put myself in the place of all the people who came to visit the museum, who saw fake works of art, who paid an entrance fee. It’s intolerable and I hope we find those responsible.” ||||| Image copyright Musée Terrus Image caption More than 80 paintings said to be by Étienne Terrus were fake (this one, of Collioure in the Pyrenees, is real and is now on display) 
 
 A French museum dedicated to painter Étienne Terrus has discovered paintings it thought were by him were fakes. 
 
 The Terrus museum in Elne in the south of France discovered 82 works originally attributed to the artist were not painted by him. 
 
 More than half the collection is thought to be fake. The paintings cost about €160,000 (£140,000). 
 
 Staff at the museum were not aware of the forgeries until a visiting art historian alerted them. 
 
 The council in Elne bought the paintings, drawings and watercolours for the museum over a 20-year period. 
 
 Eric Forcada, an art historian, contacted the museum in the town near Perpignan several months ago to express his doubts about the authenticity of the paintings. 
 
 The museum assembled a committee of experts from the cultural world, who inspected the works and concluded that 82 of them had not been painted by the Elne-born artist. 
 
 The news was announced on Friday as the museum opened after a renovation. 
 
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 In interviews on Friday, the mayor of the Pyrenees town, Yves Barniol, said the situation was "a disaster" and apologised to those who had visited the museum in good faith. 
 
 Terrus was born in 1857 and died in 1922 in Elne, although he lived most of his life in Roussillon, also in the Pyrenees. He was a close friend of painter Henri Matisse. 
 
 Image copyright Musée Terrus Image caption The authentic Vue Cathédrale remains on display 
 
 Some of the paintings show buildings that were built after Terrus' death, France 3 said. 
 
 The town hall has filed a complaint against those who ordered, painted, or sold the fake paintings. 
 
 Local police are investigating the case, which they say could affect other regional artists too.
– A museum in southern France suffered a terrible blow when experts declared that over half its paintings are forgeries, the BBC reports. The Terrus museum, dedicated to the work of painter Étienne Terrus, apparently knew nothing of the fakes until an art historian informed them. "It's a catastrophe," the mayor of Elne, where the museum resides, tells the Telegraph. "I put myself in the place of all the people who came to visit the museum, who saw fake works of art, who paid an entrance fee. It's intolerable and I hope we find those responsible." Police have taken the fakes and are trying to find those responsible. Apparently 82 of the museum's 140 works are phony, spotted at times because they contained buildings constructed after Terrus died in 1922. Acclaimed for his landscapes of French Catalonia, Terrus was close with artists Aristide Maillol and Henri Matisse and lived mostly in Elne, a town on the Tech River that's less than three miles from the Mediterranean coast of Languedoc-Roussillon, France 24 reports. The museum spent over $190,000 acquiring paintings they thought were his. But the Terrus likely isn't alone: Art experts say at least one in five paintings in the world's top museums may well be fake.