Sensational new twists in saga of playboy who lent fake art to Prince Charles
...after a THIRD ‘Monet’ that he owns was proved to be a forgery as well
JAMES STUNT tried to sell a Monet for £20 million that turned out to be a fake – just days before The Mail on Sunday revealed allegations that the bankrupt businessman had lent counterfeit works to the Prince of Wales.
Television art expert Ian Towning, who owns the prestigious Bourbon Hanby Arcade in Chelsea, West London, says he was invited to inspect the painting, described as a landscape painted by the French Impressionist in 1889, during a cloak-and-dagger meeting at Stunt’s Belgravia flat on October 29.
Mr Towning claims that he and a valuation expert became suspicious after noticing the frame was not original and that areas of the painting, including the sky and signature, did not appear to conform to Monet’s style.
Bullion dealer Stunt, the ex-husband of Formula 1 heiress Petra Ecclestone, made excuses about the frame and ‘waffled on about what paperwork he had’, Mr Towning recalls.
But the art and antiques dealer, who has appeared on ITV’s Dickinson’s Real Deal and Channel 4’s Posh Pawn, says it was immediately apparent the work was not authentic.
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Stunt said all the paperwork for the painting was genuine, and there should be no issue about it. He said he could give us everything we wanted. He said he could prove where the painting had come from, which gallery.
‘The valuer who accompanied me later said as soon as he walked into the room and saw it hanging on the wall, he knew it was a fake. He said to me, “100 per cent, it’s a fake”.’
Last week this newspaper exposed how Stunt had lent three fake ‘masterpieces’ with a combined insurance value of £104 million to Prince Charles for display in Dumfries House, the mansion he uses as the headquarters of his charity, The Prince’s Foundation.
Works supposedly by Monet, Picasso and Dali had been painted by American master forger Tony Tetro, who makes a legal living painting convincing replicas for clients to hang in their homes and offices. They cost around £20,000 each. According to Tetro, he sold 11 of them to Stunt.
After the bombshell disclosure, The Prince’s Foundation said all 17 artworks loaned to Dumfries House by Stunt had been taken down and returned to him.
Now it seems that Stunt is in possession of other fakes – and is potentially trying to sell them.
When Mr Towning i nformed Stunt’s middlemen that he believed the painting viewed last week was a forgery, they were left shocked, he recalled.
‘As far as they were concerned, they were trying to sell a painting on his behalf that was meant to be genuine.
‘And they believe that Stunt truly believes it’s a genuine Monet.’
Mr Stunt l ast week insisted: ‘ I have never sold a fake in my life and I have never attempted to.’
Mr Towning described the bizarre arrangements for the meeting, which was shrouded in such secrecy that he was told neither where it would t ake place, nor who owned the painting. He was approached by a broker, a middleman for Stunt, and led to believe the painting was on offer for about £20 million. Mr Towning then agreed to be driven from his dealership in a 4x4, along with his valuation expert, to a property in Belgravia. They were met by a bodyguard and led into an open-plan living room where the alleged Monet hung on a wall. They examined the work in detail and took it off the wall to look for auction stamps on the reverse which could help verify its provenance. But Mr Towning said: ‘On the left- hand side of the painting there was an area that didn’t look like the work of Monet. And on the top right there was an area that made me suspicious. The sky just didn’t click – it didn’t look quite right. And the signature wasn’t right.
‘But the canvas confirmed my feelings that the painting was a complete fake. I was also looking at all the stamps that were from the various auction houses the painting had apparently been through, and I was not convinced by them.’
The frame, which bore the title and year of the painting – Le Village de la Roche-Blond au Soleil Couchant, 1889 – was also not the original. Mr Towning only found out the identity of its owner when a chainsmoking Stunt arrived 90 minutes later in a grey tracksuit. Responding to their questions, Stunt claimed the frame had been so dilapidated that he’d got rid of it.
‘No art collector would ever do
‘The sky just didn’t click – it didn’t look right’
that,’ Mr Towning says. ‘ You’d always restore the original frame unless it was completely beyond restoration. I’m surprised anyone with a real Monet would change the frame, as it could help prove its authenticity, age and provenance.’
No money was discussed at the meeting. ‘He didn’t give us a price, we didn’t give him a price,’ said Mr Towning. ‘When we left, I said, “We need to study this very closely.”’
The valuer double-checked images of the real painting that had previously been taken, which only confirmed the pair’s suspicions. But who painted Stunt’s copy remains a mystery.
‘His middlemen have since said that James was unhappy and he didn’t realise the Monet was a fake,’ Mr Towning said. ‘It’s a perfectly nicely executed painting – it’s attractive. But it’s not a Monet.’ Meanwhile, it has also emerged, that another ‘Monet’ belonging to Stunt has been officially rejected by the world’s top authority on the painter, the Wildenstein Institute.
Elizabeth Gorayeb, executive director of New York’s Wildenstein Plattner Institute – which took over the work of compiling the Monet catalogue in 2017 – revealed that Stunt had previously applied for an image of Water Lilies to be included in the inventory of Monet’s works.
The picture was inspected by a member of the institute’s Monet Committee. But on January 13, 2016, Guy Wildenstein wrote to Stunt denying his request. His letter, released to The Mail on Sunday last week said: ‘We have no intention of including the work in our inventory of the works of Monet.’