Bad news is art-stopping

Museum full of fakes

More than half the paintings owned by a southern French museum are worthless fakes — and authorities fear more forgeries may be on display at other public galleries.

The small Terrus Museum in Elne, dedicated to local artist Etienne Terrus, learned that 82 of its 140 works are fakes after art historian Eric Forcadea raised the alarm.

Forcadea first noticed that some paintings attributed to Terrus, a contemporary of Henri Matisse, featured buildings built after the artist’s 1922 death.

The state-owned museum then had a committee of experts inspect the works. It concluded that many were not the real McCoy.

“It’s a catastrophe,” Yves Barniol, the mayor of Elne, told The Telegraph on Friday, when the news was announced following a renovation at the museum.

“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,” Barniol said. “It’s intolerable and I hope we find those responsible.”

Roughly $170,000 was paid for the phony oil paintings, watercolors and drawings over the past few decades.

Two local groups raised money to buy others, and more were donated to the museum, which is run by the local city hall.

Barniol said $365,000 was recently invested to refurbish the museum.

“We will continue to promote local art,” he said.

The municipality has filed legal complaints for forgery and fraud, which can help spur a broader investigation. Police seized the fakes and are trying to trace the forgers and dealers who sold them.

Detectives suspect that other museums may also contain large numbers of forged works attributed to southern French artists.

“We know there have been a lot of forgeries circulating and we believe a well-organized network was behind this,” a source told the Telegraph.

Art experts estimate that at least 20 percent of paintings owned by major museums across the world may not be the work of the purported artists.