Thrift stores are no longer hunting grounds for indie vintage fiends and elderly knicknack hunters — more and more, unsuspecting kitsch fans are picking up bargain-basement paintings at flea markets and garage sales only to later discover that they’ve purchased master works by art legends, with value to match. While these finds often face exhaustive verification procedures, many lucky shoppers still end up the owners of paintings worth a fortune — not a bad deal, when they were just looking for pretty pictures. If the trend continues, we won’t be surprised if we run into Jeffrey Deitch picking through discount bins at our local thrift store, or find Jeff Koons rooting around a suburban yard sale looking for one of his own balloon statues. For now, here is a list of our favorite stories of unexpected art finds.

Mystery Box, Missing Link

He was simply looking for a barber chair at a garage sale in the spring of 2000, but Rick Norsigian, a painter from Fresno, California, ended up spotting some glass plate negatives of Yosemite that reminded him of his days working at the monument during his youth. He talked the seller down from a whopping $70 to just $45 for the two boxes containing the negatives, only to discover later that those boxes may be worth a little more — about $199,999,955 more. This cache turned out to be 65 glass plates by celebrated American photographer Ansel Adams, estimated to have been shot in the 1920s and 1930s. The images, which art dealer David W. Streets has referred to as a “missing link” in Adams’s career, had previously been thought destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire that destroyed 5,000 similar plates.

Bolot-meow-sky

Beth Feeback, a painter from North Carolina, has spent much of her artistic career creating whimsical paintings of brightly-colored cats with cartoon eyes. But her most significant art purchase was of a somewhat more classic work…even if that purchase wasn’t exactly intentional. While selling her paintings at the Leanne Pizio Art Festival in Oak Ridge, North Carolina, Feeback caught a chill and decided to visit a nearby thrift store to pick up a sweater, where she ran across two large, painted canvases on sale for $9.99 each. Delighted to find such a bargain on materials, she snatched both up and returned to her post. But when she showed her find to the festival creator, Pizio noticed a tag on the back of one that suggested it might be valuable, and advised Feeback to do a bit a research before painting over it. Feeback finally got around to this last July, and discovered that the painting, a red diamond-shaped work with blue and white rectangles cutting through it off-center, was actually a notable piece by early 20th-century painter Ilya Bolotowsky. Through some social media outreach, she found a gallery that had once owned the painting, who provided Feeback with original documents proving its legitimacy. She then contacted Sotheby’s, which accepted “Vertical Diamond” for auction and expects to receive $15,000 to $20,000 for it in March 2013. If her own neon-kitty sales at the Pizio art fair weren’t what Feeback would have liked, it looks like she made out okay.

This Might be Worth Something…

Whatever attracted a Virginia woman to a box containing a Paul Bunyan doll and a plastic cow at a Shenandoah Valley flea market this past September must have been the right instinct. In that box was a lovely landscape painting, which the owner first stored in a plastic bag in a shed, then in the trunk of her car, before deciding she liked the frame and hanging it in her kitchen. When she started to tear the brown paper off in the back, her mother stopped her, speculating it might be worth something when she noticed that the frame had a Renoir plaque on it. She then brought it to the Potomack Co. auction house, who determined it to be the French Impressionist’s “Paysage Bords De Seine”, and speculated that it could fetch as much as $100,000. Unfortunately, before its new owner had a chance to celebrate, The Washington Post did some digging and found that the painting was stolen from The Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951. The flea market shopper was “disappointed,” to say the least.

“Who the f**** is Jackson Pollock” or Horton Hears a Pollock

When your friend is depressed, what could cheer them up more than a large and “ugly” piece of artwork? Apparently that was retired truck driver Teri Horton’s idea when she stumbled upon a rather large (66×47-inch) painting of red, white, black and yellow paint splatters at a California thrift store in 1992. After Horton used her haggling skills to knock the price tag down from $8 to $5, she brought it to her friend, who declined the gift: in addition to also thinking it was ugly, it wouldn’t fit through the door of her trailer. This left Horton with no choice but to try and resell it at a garage sale. When a local art teacher passed by and suggested the painting may be a Jackson Pollock, Horton’s response was, “Who the f*** is Jackson Pollock?” Since these fateful words were spoken, Horton has spent several years attempting to verify the painting, despite going through a forensic specialist who allegedly found a fingerprint in the painting matching one in Pollock’s studio. If proven real, the painting would reportedly be worth over $100 million. While its resolution is unclear, Horton’s story has now been captured in the 2006 documentary, “Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock?”

Andy At “A Very Good Bargain”

Even art collectors can be on the lookout for “a very good bargain.” This past April, collector and businessman Andy Fields was hunting for deals at a garage sale in Las Vegas, Nevada, when he hit on what he thought was a great sale: five paintings for $5. When he went to frame one of those paintings, he found a sketch behind it of 1930s singer Rudy Vallee. On the back of that sketch was Andy Warhol’s signature. Fields did some more digging to find that the sketch was most likely created in 1939 or 1940, when Warhol was bedridden with cholera. The sketch, said to be worth over $2 million, is one of the earliest pieces from the legendary artist, showing his first signs of style and obsession with celebrity-as-art. According to The Daily Mail, a forensic handwriting examiner confirmed that the signature was, in fact, Warhol’s.

“Education of the Virgin” Finally Graduates Yale

A painting’s lovely earth tones are sliced in half by a horizontal crease; a now-headless angel hovers over a woman and child; chunks of paint are lobbed off a disfigured canvas, exposed to years of dampness. This is how John Marciari, curator of European Art at the San Diego Museum of Art, first spotted a work titled “Anonymous, Spanish School, seventeenth century,” in the basement at Yale University. At the time, the university was renovating the building and relocating its basement inventory; a former curator of Early European Art at the university’s art gallery, Marcia recalls noticing its striking attributes beneath the damage, later stating, “Not only was it a work of great quality, but the painting was so confidently executed that it seemed to bear the signature style of a particular artist.” He expected to do years of research, anticipating numerous academic debates to determine whether this painting may in fact be the work of 17-century Spanish artist Diego Velázquez, and furthermore, the painting Education of the Virgin. But when the story broke to the media in July of 2010, the rest of the world was immediately convinced that a missing masterpiece had been found. The painting’s authenticity is still being researched by experts, and it has since been subjected to X-ray analysis, which has revealed that it is mounted similarly to other early works by the Spanish artist. The Daily Mail reports that the painting is believed to have been given to the museum as a gift by the Townshends, a family of shipowners whose vessels often traveled to Spain, in 1925.

Source: Artinfo.com

Author: Terri Ciccone

Link: http://bit.ly/TlUSB2

Mr. Ramnarine had been convicted 10 years ago on state charges that he made unauthorized copies of sculptures and sold them as originals. The federal prosecutors in this case have accused him of forging documents to create a false provenance for his bronze flag, saying that Mr. Johns had given him the sculpture as a gift in 1989.

When Mr. Johns sent the mold of his 1960 “Flag” to Mr. Ramnarine’s foundry, Empire Bronze, years ago, he had asked that a wax mold of it be made. Mr. Ramnarine delivered the wax mold, but held onto Mr. Johns’s original mold. Without Mr. Johns’s knowledge or authorization, he manufactured a 19.5-inch by 17-inch bronze flag, dated it 1989 and forged Mr. Johns’s signature, the federal complaint says.

In 2010 Mr. Ramnarine tried to sell his bronze flag, even inviting one collector to view the supposed masterpiece at a storage facility. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said: “As alleged, Brian Ramnarine not only cast a fake sculpture in his foundry shop, but he also cast a wide net in his efforts to pawn it off on the art world as a multi-million dollar masterpiece.” Mr. Ramnarine, who was arrested Thursday morning, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted. He could not be reached for comment.

Source: NY Times

Author: Patricia Cohen

Link: http://nyti.ms/Qo1cMl

As soon as Richard Grant, executive director of the Diebenkorn Foundation, glimpsed the three drawings in an Upper East Side apartment several years ago, he knew there was a problem.
The artwork on the wall had been previously identified by the artist’s estate as fake Richard Diebenkorns. But here they were again, proudly displayed as Diebenkorns by a new owner who had no idea he had bought discredited drawings.
For organizations like Mr. Grant’s that are charged with protecting an artist’s legacy, the job of patrolling for fakes has become something like a game of Whac-A-Mole.
“You put it down, and then five, seven years later, poof!, and there it is again,” he said by phone from the foundation’s offices in California.
The resale of fakes is a persistent and growing problem without a good solution, say collectors, dealers, artist estates and law enforcement agencies. Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation can seize forgeries in criminal cases, these represent only a tiny portion of the counterfeit art that is circulating.
“They churn through the market,” James Wynne, an F.B.I. special agent who handles art forgery cases, said of fakes.
There are no clear rules for what happens to phony art after it is identified. “It all depends what the facts are, what the art is, how many works are involved and how expensive they are,” he said.
Art whose authenticity is disputed occupies a special sort of limbo, as demonstrated by the settlement last month between Knoedler & Company, a Manhattan gallery that abruptly closed last year, and a customer who accused that gallery of selling him a forged Jackson Pollock for $17 million.
The F.B.I. is investigating whether that painting, known as “Silver Pollock,” might be part of a larger cache of forgeries. But no charges have been brought and the gallery maintains that the work is authentic. So what happens to a $17 million painting that some people consider a fake?
Given the publicity surrounding this particular case, a sale any time soon would be surprising, art lawyers and dealers agree. But nothing in criminal law would necessarily prevent the owner from selling it today as a Pollock. (Details of the settlement are confidential, including who owns the artwork now.)
When it comes to undisputed fakes, law enforcement officials try to halt resales by such practices as stamping works as fake or, in rare cases, destroying them. Each option has drawbacks, including the possibility of mistakenly destroying an authentic work.
Ultimately, though, both the police and buyers mostly rely on the art market to police itself.
Artist foundations and estates that find fakes on eBay or at small auction houses can inform the dealer or Web site, but they have no authority to seize or mark the work. Frequently, they say, counterfeits go underground only to re-emerge later, labeled as the real thing.
Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation, said that during the years that it authenticated works by Roy Lichtenstein, he regularly noticed that collectors informed that they had a fake would later quietly sell it as genuine. “And then we’d find somebody else would send the same work to us six months later” asking for it to be authenticated, he said.
In France, Switzerland and other countries that recognize the “moral rights” of an artist, heirs or foundations like Lichtenstein’s can ask the courts for permission to destroy a fake. But Ronald D. Spencer, a Manhattan lawyer and editor of the art-law handbook “The Expert Versus the Object: Judging Fakes and False Attributions in the Visual Arts,” said he was glad that is not done in the United States. The notion is “an anathema,” he said, noting how frequently opinions about authenticity can change. Just two months ago, for example, three J. M. W. Turner paintings that had been dismissed as fakes were reclassified as genuine.
“Stamp it, by all means, so that any subsequent owner knows that it was considered a fake, but don’t destroy works,” Mr. Spencer said, echoing the view of many art dealers. If destruction becomes routine, he added, a genuine work will mistakenly be consigned to the shredder at some point.
Marking a work was the course taken in 2011 by the Dedalus Foundation, a nonprofit created by the artist Robert Motherwell, after it identified a putative Motherwell painting as forged.
As part of a civil settlement, Dedalus demanded that the work be permanently marked as a fake. Now on the back of the work, “Spanish Elegy,” an indelible stamp states that “this painting is not an authentic work by Robert Motherwell but a forgery.”
The effort to keep fakes off the market may be most hampered by the reluctance of those in the know to speak out. Art experts and institutions, most prominently the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Lichtenstein Foundation, have stopped authenticating artwork, or pointing out suspected fakes, for fear of being dragged into a lawsuit by the owner of a work they rejected.

Major auction houses that discover an advertised work is fake usually cancel the sale and return the art to the seller. For example, when Christie’s learned that a Marc Chagall it had sold in 1997 for $450,000 was fake, it canceled the deal and sent the work back to the seller. What happens afterward to these sorts of returned works is anyone’s guess.
Once law enforcement becomes involved, the picture changes. Government agencies like the F.B.I., the United States attorney’s office or the Postal Service (which has a role in forgery cases involving mail fraud) may stamp forgeries after a conviction or plea agreement, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Sometimes the work bears an F.B.I. evidence sticker.
While convicted swindlers generally forfeit their fakes to the government, duped buyers can usually get their property back with a letter identifying the work as a fake after a case is closed, F.B.I. officials said.
Sometimes the F.B.I. may end up with the goods. As part of a 2004 plea agreement, for example, Ely Sakhai, who orchestrated an ingenious forgery operation, put up $12.5 million to reimburse his victims. Since they were being paid, the owners were happy to give their paintings to the F.B.I., which added them to its extensive collection of fakes.
These works, along with ones confiscated by the government, are stored in warehouses and occasionally brought out for lectures and seminars, F.B.I. officials said. In 2007 the agency lent some to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., for its exhibition “Fakes and Forgeries: The Art of Deception.”
The government has the power to destroy uncontested fakes or to ask a judge for permission to do so if the defendants insist they are real, but that rarely happens, law enforcement officials said.
Judges, however, can be unpredictable.
In 1995, when a gallery in Hawaii could not pay a $2 million fine levied for selling phony prints by Salvador Dalí and others, a federal court ordered the government to auction off more than 12,000 of them to the public.
The proceeds went toward repaying the debt, but federal investigators and art dealers protested the large-scale sell-off of fakes. Most of the prints were marked as counterfeit with only a tiny stamp, easily hidden by a frame. Others had a removable sticker or no marking at all to identify them as discredited.
“This makes the federal government an accessory to future art fraud,” Bernard Ewell, a Dalí art appraiser, said at the time. Then he added, “But I’m delighted because it gives me guaranteed job security.”
As for the phony Diebenkorn drawings that Mr. Grant saw in that Upper East Side living room, their whereabouts today are a mystery. The owner told him that he had returned the forgeries to the dealer and been given his money back. “We called the guy repeatedly,” Mr. Grant said of the dealer, “but we never heard back.”

Source: NY Times

Author: Patricia Cohen

http://nyti.ms/SAoXwb

How can museums show off their priceless art treasures while protecting them from growing incidents of vandalism? That debate was renewed this week after a man used black paint to scrawl on Mark Rothko’s “Black on Maroon” painting at the Tate Modern in London.

The Rothko incident is just the latest in a long tradition of museum art vandalism. At the Clyfford Still Museum last December, a woman was caught urinating near a painting valued at over $30 million. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1996, Canadian artist Jubal Brown intentionally vomited blue-colored foods on a Piet Mondrian painting.

“Vandalism is probably the most difficult thing to protect against,” said Steve Keller, chair of the Museum Association Security Committee. Mr. Keller, who provides security consultations for museums across the country, said a museum’s best bet is to install a camera above the artwork that registers movement around the art. When a visitor gets too close, the system will alert a guard stationed in the room. “But even that isn’t foolproof,” he said.

At the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2006, a 12-year-old boy stuck his chewing gum on Helen Frankenthaler’s painting “The Bay.” And a year later, in Avignon, France, a woman kissed an all-white painting by Cy Twombly, smearing red lipstick across it. She thought the artist would understand it as “an act of love.”

In the case of the Rothko, Wlodzimierz Umaniec, who has been charged by the British police for the crime, claims the incident was not an act of vandalism but was related to a movement called “yellowism.”

Robert Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s National Art Crime Team, said museums have to balance security concerns with visitor experience. Museums are often reluctant to cover the works with glass or another protective barrier because people want to see the work up close, he said. Visitors even complain when they must stand far away from works, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre.

These are concerns the Museum of Modern Art in New York will have to contend with as it prepares for an exhibit of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” opening Oct. 24. Mr. Wittman recommends good sightlines for guards and a camera system. “I’d like to see a Plexiglas case around it, too, but I’m a security guy,” he said, “I doubt the curators would want that.” A spokesperson for MoMA declined to comment on security.

Historically, great works of art have drawn attention from individuals making a personal or political statement. In 1914, the militant suffragette Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to Diego Velázquez’s painting “The Rokeby Venus.” She said her actions were a demonstration against the arrest of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. In a court statement, Ms. Richardson wrote, “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history.” Ms. Richardson was sentenced to six months imprisonment.

Michelangelo’s works have been similarly unlucky. At St. Peter’s Basilica in 1972, a man attacked the sculptor’s “Pietà” with a hammer. He damaged the face and neck of the Virgin Mary sculpture, as well as the left forearm which fell to floor and broke apart. A transparent protective barrier has since been installed to protect the sculpture. Nearly two decades later, in 1991, another hammer-wielding man attacked the sculpture “David,” breaking apart one of the toes on its left foot.

Can vandalism ever be considered an act of art? No way, says Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Mr. Govan said even maverick artists like Dada great Marcel Duchamp marked up artistic reproductions, not originals: “Duchamp didn’t paint a mustache on the actual Mona Lisa.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Author: Anna Russell

Link: http://on.wsj.com/TFTAoo

The Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s black and white “Electric Cord” painting, which disappeared 42 years ago, has turned up in a New York City warehouse, The Associated Press reported.

The painting was reported stolen after it was sent out to be cleaned by its owner, the art dealer Leo Castelli, in 1970 and never returned.

The 1961 painting — which depicts a tightly wound electrical cord and whose value is estimated at $4 million — re-emerged last week when the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation notified Castelli’s widow, Barbara Castelli, that someone was trying to sell it.

According to a court filing in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, James Goodman, a gallery owner, last week called the Lichtenstein Foundation to say he had been told by a “third party” that the painting was at Hayes Storage in Manhattan and asked if the foundation would authenticate the work, The New York Post reported.

Mr. Goodman told The Post that he had no idea that the painting might have been stolen, and that the current owners said they had an invoice showing the piece was purchased from  Castelli, who died in 1999.

The court filing says the painting was recently on display at a museum in Colombia and that Ms. Castelli was “deeply concerned” that the painting may disappear again. Justice O. Peter Sherwood signed an order barring Hayes Storage from selling or moving the painting until a hearing next week.

Castelli, who mounted Lichtenstein’s first solo exhibition at his gallery in 1962, bought “Electric Cord,” in the 1960s for $750, according to The Post. Lichtenstein died in 1997.

Source: NY Times

Author: Robin Pogrebin

Link: http://nyti.ms/OFKKkz

Described as a short thin man with sparse hair and ears like the handle of a jug, Mark Landis has over the past 30 years visited museums across the United States and attempted, with varying luck, to donate his forgeries. His most recent attempt, at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana caught the attention of the art world and as well as law enforcement. Landis, using the alias, Father Arthur Scott, had contacted the museum claiming he had a pastel drawing by Charles Courtney Curran, left to him by his mother, that he would like to donate to the museum.

A few weeks later Father Scott arrived with the pastel. He was taken by the museum’s curator to the director’s office to discuss and receive the donation, where according to the curator, Father Scott “had attention deficit disorder worse than anyone I’d ever met”.  But curators and directors rely on donations and often deal with the elderly and eccentrics, so no suspicion arose. Afterwards they toured the museum where Father Scott showed a great deal of artistic knowledge, speaking fluently about the collection and schools of painting.

Five minutes after Father Scott had left the director received news from the museums registrar that the Curran was not what it appeared. The pastel was most likely a forgery, a downloaded image of the original, glued to a board, sanded down and distressed and then painted over.

The Crime

The problem that arises at this point is that whatever perceived deviance the institution feels Landis has committed no crime according to the United States penal code. “The criminal statue of fraud says there must be a loss and that’s the problem. There hasn’t been a loss to any victim,” according to ex-FBI agent Robert Wittman.

One way we can categorize this as crime though is if we consider moral turpitude (conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty or good morals). Landis committed the act of fraud by offering his forgeries as licit pieces of art, as well as using aliases and impersonating a priest, in exchange for the satisfaction of pulling of the forgery and acting as a donor of the licit artwork.

Criminological Theories

Mark Landis’ forgeries fall under several criminological theories:

1. Rational Choice (Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham): Landis weighed the pros and cons of the crime, most likely doing a cost risk analysis, and determined that he could get away with it.
2. Routine Activities (Marcus Felson and Lawrence Cohen):

• Motivated Offender – Mark Landis wants to have his forgeries in museums.
• Suitable Target – Museums accept donations.
• Lack of Capable Guardians – Here is where the museums may be at fault, since curators and directors rely on donations and may overlook forgeries as they are excited to acquire a new artwork.

1. Biological (Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri – although now disregarded by most criminologists): At age 17 Landis suffered a breakdown after the death of his father and was diagnosed as schizophrenic (could also have been bi-polar). Note: Landis sold several original artworks over a period of time through institutions for the mentally and won a Mississippi arts contest in 2004 held for the disabled, claiming he had a heart condition.

Combat Strategy

1. To combat rational choice against forgery and fraud the punishment for such acts must be stiffened and carried out more swiftly. By outweighing the cost risk analysis forgers may be persuaded not to commit their frauds.
2. The strategy best suited to fight the routine activities theory is situational crime prevention (Cornish and Clarke). Setting the following rules (“setting rules”) could vastly decrease the acceptance of forged artworks. “Target hardening” could have lead to stopping Mark Landis, as the industry overall needs to more thoroughly investigate donations. Just because something is a donation does not free it of crime. “Reduction of anonymity” could also work in this situation. We learn here to double check the donor themselves, as well as thoroughly vet the objects donated before the institution accepts the actual piece. It is the reputation of the institution, and the industry as a whole, that is at risk.
3. Biology as a criminological theory is more difficult to combat. We can increase our monitoring and treatment of patients but that does not guarantee prevention of crime. Or we can find a cure to the disease and that also does not guarantee the prevention of crime.

Federal investigators on Thursday seized more than $20 million worth of Asian antiquities from a Manhattan dealer who they suspect has been importing looted antiquities from India for several years.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office issued an arrest warrant for the dealer, Subhash Kapoor, on charges of possessing stolen property. Mr. Kapoor owns a gallery on the Upper East Side known as Art of the Past that advertises its role in providing antiquities to several of the world’s major museums.

He is currently in India where he is being held on similar charges related to the theft of antiquities, according to a statement from the office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which made the seizures.

Among the items seized from a Manhattan storage unit was a bronze sculpture dating from the Chola Period, which ran from the late ninth century to the 13th century. Authorities valued the statue at nearly $2.5 million and said it was among several items that had been stolen from temples in India.

There was no answer at Mr. Kapoor’s Madison Avenue gallery, which The New York Post reported appears to have been closed for several weeks.

Authorities said the investigation began in 2007 based on a tip from Indian authorities. Some of the artifacts seized Thursday had been previously displayed in major museums, they said, and in some cases, they said, Mr. Kapoor had created false provenances to disguise the fact that they were stolen.

“These seizures send a clear message to looters, smugglers and dealers to think twice before trying to profit from illicit cultural property in the United States,” said James T. Hayes Jr., the special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations in New York.

Source: NY Times

Author: Kevin Flynn

Link: http://nyti.ms/QOi4tZ

A gifted artist who used his exceptional talent to get rich by faking art work will expose all his tricks in a confession-style book.

Ken Perenyi will reveal how he fooled, dealers, collectors and auctioneers into believing his paintings were rare finds by old masters in his memoirs Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger.

For four decades American Perenyi,aged 63, who lived in London for 30 years, earned up to $100,000 a time by pretending his paintings were the work of well-known second rate artists, the Observer reported.

He steered away from the greatest masters because they were too well documented and kept under the radar by rotating the auctioneers and visiting regional dealers, often claiming he had found the artwork in a relative’s attic or in a car boot sale.

His specialties included British sporting and marine paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries, painting in the style of artists such as F Herring and Thomas Buttersworth .

The book, to be published next month, is expected to embarrass experts both in Britain and the US who were deceived by the cunning artist.

He tells how he used fake stamps, chalk marks, old inventory labels and salt water to create rust. He even used canvas weaves form India and China which had the irregularities of cloth used by 19th century artists.

Perenyi, who is self-taught, told the Observer that he had attempted to become a legitimate artist.
He added: ‘But every time I needed supplies or food, I would make a fake and sell it…I started to rely on faking more and more. I eventually turned it into a full-blown career.

‘I pride myself on my forensic expertise. I started with extensive research…the correct canvas, correct stretchers…framed in good period antique frames.’

He was behind the forgery of Ruby Throats with Apple Blossoms by the American 19th-century artist Martin Johnson which was hailed as a major ‘discovery’ and fetched nearly $100,000 at auction in New York.

Although investigated by FBI, the case against Perenyi was dropped in 2003, subject to the statute of limitations, which leaves him free to publish his secrets.

He was never told why the case was dropped, but he believes the art world would be keen to prevent the exposure of the serial forgeries.

Publisher Pegasus Books said Perenyi’s confession is ‘certain to be a bombshell for the major international auction houses and galleries’.

Today he owns a studio in Maderia Beach, Florida.

Source: Mail Online

Author: Emma Clark

Link: http://bit.ly/MguNkx

The NYPD has cracked the case of the stolen Salvador Dali painting after it was mysteriously mailed back to New York from Europe, The Post has learned.

On Monday, August 22nd 1814, little of the population of Washington DC remained in the city, fearing approaching British forces retaliating the American pillaging and burning of York (modern day Toronto). One man who did remain was JT Frost, working in the newly built House of Representatives. Burdened by default with the responsibility of what to save at this crucial time Frost and his colleague Samuel Burch (with the aid of 3 messengers) took one cart with four oxen and loaded the most important documents of the House and drove nine miles into the country to a place of safety. They returned on Wednesday, August 24th, just hours before the Union Jack was hoisted on Capitol Hill and joined the rest of the population as refugees. The men left Washington frustrated and infuriated knowing that with sufficient warning and transport they could have saved all the papers of the House and the newly formed Library of Congress.

According to witnesses you could see the glow of the flames in the night sky 50 miles away along the Patuxent River and as far away as Virginia and Baltimore. The British army had taken the recently relocated U.S. capital of Washington, D.C. and set fire to public buildings following the U.S. defeat at the Battle of Bladensburg. Government buildings, including the White House and newly built Capitol building, housing the Library of Congress, were destroyed. At this point Washington D.C. had no strategic military significance for the British. But as a reaction for the American plundering and burning of public and private buildings at the Battle of York, the previous year, Admiral Alexander Cochrane wanted to give the Americans “a complete drubbing”.

As Britain battled Napoleon, the British Navy sought to cut off trade between France and neutral countries, including the United States. The British began a practice of intercepting American merchant ships, often taking sailors off the ships and “impressing” them into the British Navy. Throughout this period (until 1810) the British took nearly 5,000 sailors off American ships.

The Battle of York was fought on April 27th,1813, at York, Upper Canada. An American force supported by a naval flotilla landed on the lakeshore to the west, defeated the defending British force and captured the town and dockyard. The American forces subsequently carried out several acts of arson and looting in the town. At the time of the battle, it was against the civilized laws of war to burn a non-military facility and the Americans had not only burned Parliament but also plundered and burned the Governor’s mansion, private homes and warehouses. So, on August 24th, an advance guard of British troops marched to Capitol Hill. General Robert Ross sent the party, under a flag of truce, to agree to terms, but were attacked by sniper fire from a private home. This was the only resistance the soldiers met. Keeping with policy of destroying buildings used for hostile purposes the home was burned, and the Union Flag raised over Washington. The buildings housing the Senate and House of Representatives were set ablaze not long after.

Early warning signs, including the British fleet sailing up the Patuxent River, went unheeded. To quote Major General John Van Ness, “By God they would not come with such a fleet without meaning to strike somewhere. But they certainly will not come here! What the devil will they do here? No! No! Baltimore is the place, Sir. That is of so much more consequence”. And they did strike Baltimore, but weeks later, as the British bombarded Fort McHenry, only to be held off by a stoic defense that inspired the words of the “The Star Spangled Banner”. So it was no surprise when the general public was caught off guard and fled the city as rumour of an advancing British force swept through Washington. When the British reached Capitol Hill on Wednesday, August 24th, nearly 90% of the population had fled or been called into militia duty.

The Library of Congress, established in 1800, is the de facto National Library of the United States. Started with a budget of $5,000 the collection included, at the time of the burning of Washington, 3,000 volumes contained in what Thomas Jefferson called “the handsomest room in the world”: the Hall of Representatives, which had been completed a few years earlier by architect Benjamin Latrobe. The holdings consisted of volumes of law, geography and technology arranged by size: Folio, Octabo, Quarto, Duodecimo. The Library of Congress was not a public lending library but an establishment prepared for members of Congress leading a nation straining for independent military and cultural success.

Rareties contained in the library, at the time of the burning of Washington, included texts by Boswell and Bartram, a first edition of Thomas Hutchinson’s History Of The Colony Of Massachusetts Bay and the original Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia. Interestingly, since London was the hub of publishing at the time, a majority of the volumes were British including the forty-nine volumes of works by British poets and twenty-five volumes of Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald’s British Theater. Also of note destroyed in the blaze were fluted columns by Giovanni Andrei and a grand American eagle sculpture, by Giuseepe Franzoni, with a wingspan over 12 feet.

One month after the destruction of the library, Thomas Jefferson, who played a vital role in its creation and functional structure, sold (at cost) nearly 6,500 volumes of his personal library to congress for the sum of $23,950. This contribution more than doubled the size of the Library of Congress, which at the time of the writing of this paper is more than 30,000 times its size preceeding the burning of Washington in 1814.

The following books represent some of the titles held by the Library of Congress that were destroyed in 1814:

• Adams, John Quincy. Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory: Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University by Late Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory
• Ash, John. The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language: To Which Is Prefixed, a Comprehensive Grammar
• Bartram, William. Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions; Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians
• Bozman, John Leeds. Sketch of the History of Maryland, during the Three First Years after Its Settlement: To Which Is Prefixed a Copious Introduction
• Burke, Edmund. Philosophical Inquiry into Origin of Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, with an Introductory Discourse Concerning Taste and Several Other Additions.
• Clerk, John. Essay on Naval Tactics: Systematical and Historical, with Explanatory Plates
• Hazlitt, William. The Eloquence of the British Senate: Being a Selection of the Best Speeches of the Most Distinguished English, Irish, and Scotch Parliamentary Speakers, from the Beginning of the Reign of Charles I to the Present Time
• Jackson, Richard. An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania: From Its Origin, So Far as Regards the Several Points of Controversy, which Have, from Time to Time, Arisen between the Several Governors of that Province, and Their Several Assemblies: Founded on Authentic Documents
• Kirby, Ephraim. Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Superior Court of the State of Connecticut from the Year 1785 to May 1788
• Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent. Elements of Chemistry in a New Systematic Order, Containing All the Modern Discoveries
• Lloyd, Thomas. Trial of Alexander Addison, Esq. President of the Courts of Common Pleas on an Impeachment, by the House of Representatives, before the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
• Macomb, Alexander. Treatise on Martial Law, and Courts Martial: As Practised in the United States of America
• Macpherson, David. Annals of Commerce, Manufactures, Fisheries, and Navigation: With Brief Notices of the Arts and Sciences Connected with Them: Containing the Commercial Transactions of the British Empire and Other Countries, from the Earliest Accounts to the Meeting of the Union Parliament in January 1801: And Comprehending the Most Valuable Part of the Late Mr. Andersen’s History of Commerce with a Large Appendix
•  Malthus, T.R. (Thomas Robert). An Essay on the Principle of Population, or A View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness: With an Inquiry into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils It Occasions
• Marshall, John. The Life of George Washington, Commander in Chief of the American Forces, during the War which Established the Independence of His Country and the First President of the United States
• Milton, John. The Poetical Works of John Milton: With the Principal Notes of Various Commentators. To which Are Added Illustrations, with Some Account of the Life of Milton
• Oldfield, T.H.B. (Thomas). History of the Original Constitution of Parliaments, from the Time of the Britons to the Present Day; Shewing Their Duration and Mode of Election
• Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice, Opposed to Agrarian Law, and to Agrarian Monopoly Being a Plan for Meliorating the Condition of Man, by Creating in Every Nation, a National Fund
• Petyt, George. Lex Parliamentaria: or, A Treatise of the Law and Custom of Parliaments: Shewing Their Antiquity, Names, Kinds, and Qualities: With an Appendix of a Case in Parliament between Sir Francis Goodwyn and Sir John Fortescue, for the Knight’s Place for the County of Bucks, I Jac. I
• Petyt, William. Miscellanea Parliamentaria: Containing Presidents 1. Of Freedom from Arrests, 2. Of Censures: 1. Upon Such as Have Wrote Books to the Dishonour of the Lords of Commons, or to Alter the Constitution of the Government, 2. Upon Members for Misdemeanors, 3. Upon Persons not Members, for Contempts and Misdemeanors, 4. For Misdemeanors in Election: Besides other Presidents and Orders of a Various Nature, Both of the House of Lords and Commons
• Ricketson, Shadrach. Means of Preserving Health, and Preventing Diseases: Founded Principally on an Attention to Air, Climate, Drink, Food, Sleep, Exercise, Clothing, Passions of the Mind, and Retention and Excretions
• Robertson, William. History of America
• Rush, Benjamin. Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever as It Appeared in the City of Philadelphia, in the Year
• Saxe, Maurice, Comte de. Reveries, or Memoirs upon the Art of War: Together with His Reflections Upon the Propagation of the Human Species
• Schlegel, Johan. Neutral Rights; Or an Impartial Examination of the Right of Search of Neutral Vessels under Convoy, and of Judgment Pronounced by the English Court of Admiralty, the 11^th June, 1799, in the Case of the Swedish Convoy: With Some Additions and Corrections
• Selfridge, Thomas O. Trial of Thomas O. Selfridge, Attorney at Law, Before the Hon. Isaac Parker, Esquire for the Killing of Charles Austin, on the Public Exchange, in Boston on August 4, 1806
• Sidney, Algernon. Discourses Concerning Government: To which Is Added a Short Account of the Author’s Life, and a Copious Index
• Stephen, James. War in Disguise or the Frauds of the Neutral Flags
• Stuart, Gilbert. View of Society in Europe, In Its Progress from Rudeness to Refinement, or, Inquiries Concerning the History of Law, Government, and Manners
• Varlo, Charles. A New System of Husbandry
• Williams, Samuel. The Natural and Civil History of Vermont