[MSN] One of New Zealand's leading art auction houses has admitted selling a forgery as a genuine Toss Woollaston work.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Experts fooled twice by art fake
30 July 2006  
By JOSIE MCNAUGHT

One of New Zealand's leading art auction houses has admitted selling a
forgery as a genuine Toss Woollaston work. 


The fake was exposed after the real artist saw it in a sale catalogue. 

Webbs in Auckland advertised the work, Interior View Through a Doorway, as a
Woollaston with a reserve price of $15-20,000 in its September catalogue
last year. Its real worth was more like several hundred dollars - it had
been painted in 1978 by Nelson abstract painter Errol Shaw under his own
name. 

The painting, which had a Woollaston signature added to it 20 years later,
was passed in at the auction and soon after, Shaw stepped forward to claim
it. 

What Shaw didn't know was that the gallery had already sold the picture as a
Woollaston for $5000 in 2002. 

After realising it was a fake, Webbs arranged for the owner to be reimbursed
the $5000. Sophie Coupland, who handled the auction, said the money was
recovered from the person who sold it in 2002. The matter was investigated
by the police. 

Woollaston is one of New Zealand's foremost landscape painters, and is
particularly known for his landscapes of the Nelson area. He became the
first New Zealand artist to be knighted (in 1979) and he died in 1998. 

AdvertisementAdvertisementWebbs would not put the Sunday Star-Times in touch
with the owner or say whether they had apologised to their client. 

Coupland said the painting was "an untypical work, but the signature was
good and the source was respectable". 

Webbs owner Peter Webb saw the painting when it came in for sale in 2002. He
told the Star-Times he thought it was the worst Woollaston he had ever seen.
Asked why he did not investigate further, he said he wasn't dealing with the
sale. 

Detective Constable Dean Herd of Wellington CIB investigated the case but
couldn't account for the painting between 1998-2000, when the Woollaston
signature appeared, so could not charge anyone. 

Herd wanted the painting looked at by a police document examiner, but the
vendor who had the work returned to him had thrown it out because he
considered it worthless. 

"Here's hoping it was destroyed eventually," said Herd, "and doesn't surface
in 20 years." 

Coupland said Webbs catalogued more than 2000 works of fine art each year,
but since the fake Woollaston incident, had put more resources into
researching work. 

"This means we turn away work that does not have a good provenance and we
refer people to the Auckland Art Gallery curators for an opinion." 


http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3748317a11,00.html