Club hear all about the art of forgery
Ken Lawton
Art forgery was the hot topic as East Kilbride Probus Club welcomed along Professor Roy Burden.
Professor Burden has had a long and distinguished career in molecular microbiology and biochemistry, both in Denmark and at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, where he was also chairman of the department of biosciences and biotechnology.
This brought him into contact with art forgery, which his sciences were well equipped to detect.
He is also an accomplished artist himself having exhibited in various galleries and exhibitions and is currently a guide at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery’s fine art collection.
He started by asking the following questions:
How might you know if your picture is fake?
How then might you spot the forgery?
Firstly, you should look for any provenance such as labels or dealers’ seals on the stretcher panels on the reverse.
He further suggested looking for any over-restored parts which will have obscured fragments of the original work. Also, minor works may have been ‘improved’ to sell it as a master’s work.
Always check the canvas for signatures which could have been removed and replaced by greater names.
There is, of course, an array of scientific detection such as the use of ultraviolet, chemical analysis, microscopy, x-ray, DNA and finger prints.
The latter two are valid as artists, like Jackson Pollock, often paint with their fingers and while doing so, can lean on the canvas and leave a finger print or DNA traces.
And leaning over the canvas, he can drop head hair which gets ‘painted in’.
The structure of the painting can also tell a lot, such as the varnish, which can obtain a patina over time and may include dust and dirt.
The type of canvas is also important and, indeed, the layers that make up a painting such as a base varnish, the paint cracking known as craquelure, and the final varnish.
Then there is the size of the canvas – the painting may have been done on a wooden panel which can be originated and even dated.
Pictures subjected to ultraviolet and x-rays can bring up underdrawings and previous paintings whereas the electron microscope can examine the layers of paint on the edge of the canvas.
Chemical analysis can detect modern lead-free paint used instead of the old mixtures which may contain albumen and other additives.
They will also show where modern acrylic paints used may, or may not, be correct to the era.
The old lead-based paints change with oxidisation and cleaning and retouching will realise the difference.
Professor Burden went on, with illustrations, to name some of the historical and modern forgers – people like Han van Meegreren (1889 to late 1940s) and Tom Keating (1970s to 1984).
The latter was an admitted forger and, indeed, went on Channel 4 to show how he did it and fooled the art world.
The professor concluded by saying we may purchase a picture as an investment, to give us aesthetic pleasure, a spiritual benefit or just for status.
Meanwhile, nothing has really improved in the world of art forgery, except perhaps the methods of detection, and it is still going on.
Detecting a forgery may be too late and a multi-million pound picture may end up being worth much less.
The vote of thanks was given by Bill Lennie.
East Kilbride Probus Club meeting attendees were sad to learn, through president Allan Stevenson, that member Hugh Lochridge had passed away.