[MSN] Australia. Flop of the fakes. More than a dozen paintings in our collection of European art now hang with captions confessing that they may not be as once proudly advertised.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

Flop of the fakes 

August 03, 2007 12:00am
GEE, the art shysters of Europe must have seen us colonials coming a mile
off, with our bright eyes and brighter cash.

But does the National Gallery of Victoria really have to advertise, so
loudly, just how often we were duped? 

More than a dozen paintings in our collection of European art now hang with
captions confessing that they may not be - cough - as once proudly
advertised. 


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Andrew Bolt: Doomsayers are now frothing at the mouth 

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Most notoriously, of course, the Rembrandt "self portrait" isn't. Lost from
the canvas is not just a lot of magic we foolishly read into it, but many
millions in value. 

Accidents happen, of course, and no one is accusing the painting's former
owners - most especially the old Duchess of Portland - of having cheated. 

But why are we Melburnians so often left holding the dud when the music
stops? And why shout our misfortune to the world? 

I ask this now because the NGV may soon, alas, have to rewrite its caption
for its lone van Gogh, Head of a Man, bought - like several of its dodgier
masterpieces - in the 1940s. 

Ominously, a year after it was denounced by British art critics as a fake
and sent for authentication to Amsterdam's van Gogh Museum, this curiously
drab painting - once valued at $20 million - still hasn't got the all-clear.


I hope for the best, but fear the worst. And so may I give the NGV curators
some humble advice as a mere visitor, should they have to reach for the
white-out? 

Please, please don't tell us on the new caption what this painting once was
and now isn't. Just forget the past. 

You see, it's getting embarrassing - and far too depressing. Isn't that so,
my fellow gallery visitor? 

We read too many such captions already, as we wend our increasingly
incredulous way through the collection of earlier European paintings. 

We already note, for instance, that two old Canalettos turn out to be by his
deceiving nephew, Bad Bernie Bellotto, who often figured it was worth the
cash to forge his uncle's signature. 

As the caption relates in a tight-bright-smile kind of way: "In July 1918
the National Gallery of Victoria purchased from the same vendor two superb
18th-century Italian view paintings. Both were thought to be by - or from
the studio of - Giovanni Antonio Canal, best known as Canaletto." 

What a tricksy vendor. Or merely innocent but lucky, given that the best
Canaletto is now worth four times the best of Bad Bernie. 

But how gulled the gallery visitor feels, having read this confession to
find he is looking at something less than what once was. I know, only the
ignorant judge a painting more by its caption than its content. Yet . . . 

Keep walking and reading. Note further that the Renoir could be a copy; the
Titian has its doubters; and God knows which Spaniard actually painted the
Italian Gianlorenzo Bernini's "self-portrait", after all. 

In fact, who is that bloke in the picture? The subject turns out to be as
fake as the painter, so what's the thing still doing on the wall? 

How much more critical these breast-beating captions make us. How curious
that a sorry often makes us more savage. 

So, it's only now, reading a caption admitting that a Veronese may actually
be the work of hired help do I dare point out it shows a woman with her
right leg where the left should be. 

On it goes, as you trudge on with increasingly despondent steps. Is this a
gallery of art or the artless? 

One caption at least tries to console us by considering the bright side of
having so many paintings with such uncertain parentage. 

Ricci's The Finding of Moses might really be by Tiepolo, it suggests. 

If so, that could help to make up for the fact that the Rachel Ruysch still
life is actually a "pastiche" by no one knows, the Jan Victors may be by
someone even less famous and the Cornelius Bega is actually "not consistent
with his style". 

Who trusts what any more? Next to the Garden of Love, now thought to be by
the 15th century Master of the Stories of Helen, is this confession: "This
painting has been attributed to nine artists or studios since 1939." 

Glad we got that sorted out. Or not. 

Enough. If the NGV really thinks its Titian has been accepted by experts as
"back into the canon of genuine works", there's no need to inform us "the
authenticity of this work was first doubted in 1971". 

Don't stoke our doubts. Leave us our faith. Don't make the show seem sham,
where there's so much in the gallery to love. Tell us not how we were
conned, but how we got so lucky. 

Tell us instead why it's wonderful - the Monets, the Siselys, the Turners,
the Hobbema, the two real Rembrandts, the Pissaros, the Picasso and the huge
Banquet of Cleopatra by that master Tiepolo. 

Or whoever. 

Join Andrew on www.blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt

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