Forensic Science

& The Fine Art of Forgery

Fine Art Crimes

Thefts and Forgeries of Paintings

A Vermeer Theft

On March 18, 1990

The Isabella Gardner Museum

Boston

The Concert by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1664)

The Concert by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1664)

According to the Isabella Gardner Museum, The Concert is the most valuable stolen painting in the world.

Its estimated to be worth $200 million.

Only 34 or 35 Vermeer paintings and their scarcity makes them valuable.

1) Vermeer’s "The Concert"2) Rembrandt’s "A Lady and Gentleman in Black"3) Rembrandt’s "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee"4) Rembrandt’s "Self Portrait"5) Govaert Flinck’s "Landscape with an Obelisk"6) A Shang Dynasty Chinese Bronze Beaker from 1200-1100 BC7) Degas' "La Sortie du Pelage"8) Degas' "Cortege Aux Environs de Florence"9) Degas' "Three Mounted Jockeys"10) Degas' "Program for an Artistic Soiree" (charcoal on white paper)11) Degas' "Program for an Artistic Soiree" (less finished charcoal on buff paper)12) Manet’s "Chez Tortoni"13) Napoleonic Eagle Finial

Estimated value: $500,000,000 – the Greatest Art Theft in U.S. History

The Gardner Museum Theft

Thieves and Buyers

In the $100 billion annual international art trade there is a vast divide between the thieves and the potential buyers, a chasm that is rarely bridged.

The thieves ransom the art or trade the works for guns and drugs or use them as collateral.

Fine art is a special case for insurance purposes.

Each item is unique and often irreplaceable. If the original is stolen, someone has to find it.

Art recovery theft is somewhere between 5 and 15 percent.

Stolen art works can seldom be sold as such.

The Supper at Emmaus by Han van Meegeren (1936)

Christ with the Adulteress by Han van Meegeren (1942)

Sale of Painting to Hermann Göring

Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich

A six-star general and the highest-ranking military official in Germany, head of the Gestapo, commander and chief of the Lufwaffe

He purchased the painting for 137 other works of art out of his stolen art collection at Carin Hall.

The Art Object

Central to art crime is the art object.

Is the art work that has been returned real?

Is the art work that you are buying real?

The Art Markets

The Decorative Art Market

Decorative art “is produced primarily for commercial distribution and monetary profit and usually in very large editions or frequent releases, with little resale potential.”

The Fine Art Market

These works carry provenance in which their ownership, history of exhibitions, and publications establish their authenticity and their importance and their value is in resale.

Art Market Is Unregulated

The art market is the largest unregulated business in the world.

The sales operate in secrecy.

There is no reporting, no licensing requirements for dealers and appraisers. No federal rules or regulations for auctions. The Art World operates in the dark and by custom.

Beginning in the 1960s people began to think of art as an investment and looked at its resale value.

Huge amounts of money flooded into fine art sales.

And fine art attracted many criminals.

Global Wealth

The 2015 Forbes Billionaires list has a record 1,826 billionaires with an aggregate net worth of $7.05 trillion.

The Top 100 Art Collectors in the Worldhttps://news.artnet.com/people/top-200-art-collectors-2015-part-one-286048

Fine Art Auction Houses

Sotheby’s sold an estimated $5.4 billion in art in 2012

Christie’s sold an estimated $8.4 billion in art in 2014.

History of a Painting Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, Vienna (acquired from the artist).

Seized by the Viennese Magistrate, May 1938 (following the Nazi Anschluss of March 1938).

With Dr. Erich Führer, Vienna (the state-appointed administrator for Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer).

Städtische Sammlung, Vienna (acquired from the above, November 1942).

Österreichische Galerie, Vienna (transferred from the above, 1948).

Restituted to the heirs of Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer by the Republic of Austria, March 2006.

Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer (2006)

aka The Woman in Gold

Sold for $135,000,000

Fine Art

Since 1987, FBI considers art fraud to be the third largest crime in dollar value after guns and drugs.

World War II – nearly half of the works in Europe were stolen

Many art works have dubious back stories.

The Art Loss Registerhttp://www.artloss.com/en

Now contains 609 Picassos, 181 Rembrandts, 173 Warhols, and a Caravaggio.

“A gallery of stolen art would make the Louvre seem like a small-town art gallery in comparison. Experts call it the Lost Museum.” (Boser)

FBI National Stolen Art File (NSAF)https://www.fbi.gov/about-

us/investigate/vc_majorthefts/arttheft/national-stolen-art-file

The NSAF is a computerized index of stolen art and cultural property as reported to the FBI by law enforcement agencies throughout the United States and the world.

The NSAF consists of images and physical descriptions of stolen and recovered objects, in addition to investigative case information. The primary goal of the NSAF is to serve as a tool to assist investigators in art and cultural artifact theft cases and to function as an analytical database providing law enforcement officials with information concerning art theft.

“Sophisticated art thieves like to commission copies of paintings they steal so they can ransom and sell the fakes numerous times “(McShane)

FBI Art Crime Teamhttps://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/vc_majorthefts/arttheft

The Art Crime Team

The FBI’s Art Crime Team, launched in 2004, includes 13 special agents and three Department of Justice attorneys. To date, the team has recovered 850 cultural objects valued at more than $134 million.

Authenticity

Provenance

The characteristics of the painting as an object itself

International Foundation for Art

Research (IFAR)

The only person who can authenticate a painting is the one who painted it.

All other certificates are opinions.

Provenance

The history of the object. Any pervious owners, exhibitions, and printed references.

Affixed to the painting itself

signature

stickers

auction houses / galleries prices and owners’ names

Catalogues Raisonnés

A catalogue raisonné is a laborious and exhaustive study of an artist’s oeuvre.

They are more often undertaken by a museum or the artist’s foundation (most times after the artist’s death) and under the auspices of an art historian or scholar.

Taking as long as 20 or more years to complete, the catalogue raisonné culminates as the authoritative publication documenting all known works by that artist.

Connoisseurs

* Brush strokes * Favorite subject matters* Where they typically sign on their art.* What colors and mediums they sign in.* How they sign * What mediums, materials, sizes and formats they

usually work in * What the art looks like from the back * How it's usually framed, mounted, or displayed.* If, how or where it's usually titled, dated or numbered.* What gallery, manufacturer, or supplier tags or labels it's likely to have.

The Forensics of Fine Art

“Stretcher” or a frame

Canvas has a layer called “size” [a kind of glue] which shrinks the fabric

On top of the glue layer there is a “ground” layer. In painting this is called “gesso” which forms a smooth surface

In earlier paintings the gesso was mixed with lead white pigment creating a “glow”

The paint itself is mixture of pigment (organic or inorganic) binder (walnut, linseed, poppy seed oil and tempera—egg yolk)

The varnish layer is transparent and optional and is made of natural or synthetic resin •

Stratigraphic studies is one of the standard examination methods that provides very precise information about the complexity of paint layers that make up a painting or decorative finish.

Stratigraphic studies can reveal the way the paint layers are applied and consequently, they tell us how the artist worked.

Tiny samples of paint are taken from discrete and representative areas and mounted in clear resin. Such prepared samples are observed under a binocular microscope at high magnification between 50x and 200x depending on the thickness of the examined layer.

Microscopy

Every artist has their own way of painting and of building up the layers of paint in a picture. By looking at a cross-section of a paint sample you can see how the artist put the picture together.

Rembrandt, ‘Portrait of Jan Six’, 1654

Raking Light

Raking or Grazing light – Illumination of painting surface at an angle.

The light ‘rakes’ across the paint surface.

This method can be helpful when studying the paint texture and the impasto

primo pensiero

Knowledge to exam artworks carefully always look for the primo pensiero – that is, the artist’s first thoughts. In oil paintings, they appear as outlines of images that were painted, then painted over. A raking light will often reveal them as the barely discernible ridges along the edge of a previous image that is otherwise no longer visible. These are called impedimenti.

van Gogh, Mademoiselle Gachet au Jardin, Louvre

Craquelure

For the surface examination

to determine whether or not the craquelure is genuine.

The forger endeavors to mimic these fine cracks either by adding solvents to the painting, thus accelerating the drying process, or by drawing fine black lines on its surface.

The Garden of Earthly Delights,

Hieronymus Bosch (detail) (c. 1490)

Ultra violet (UV) Fluorescence (Black Light)

This technique can tell you the type of varnish

Dammar - green

Shellac - orange

Synthetic - clear or lavender

Fresh varnish is darker

UV can be used to determine surface anomalies.

Varnishes, for example, fluoresce differently depending on their composition and age. Aged natural resin varnishes appear greenish yellow while newer synthetic varnishes may appear milky white to purple.

Oil paint and newer varnish do not fluoresce under UV. Retouchings therefore appear as dark patches on the varnish surface.

Infrared Analysis

“IR examination detects carbon-based materials such as graphite, charcoal and ink. As a result, it is most effectively used to detect under-drawing: the preparatory sketch, drawing or outline that the artist used as a guide for the painting.” (Fake or Fortune?)

• Infrared photography focuses on the layers of painting and the sketch made by the use of carbon black or charcoal by the artist.

• The different layers or alterations of the work are known as pentimenti. The alterations reveal the extent of restoration, whether or not it is a copy, and the different materials used.

• The more pentimenti present, the more likely it is that the work is the original

X-Ray

X-ray use has become a common practice among art authenticators. Not only does it unlock secrets underneath paintings, but it helps to establish authenticity

X-rays can also be used to detect traces of minerals and other elements within the paint. These traces can be clues to when the painting was executed and where. For example, this x-ray of Vermeer's "The Girl With a Pearl Earring" reveals that there were traces of lead in the paint that he used

Multispectral Scan

The camera scans a painting to identify the pigment used and then restore the true color in the resulting image.

Even with a picture hundreds of years old and covered in layers of varnish, you can see exactly what the original painting would have looked like.

Pigment Analysis

Gas chromatography–mass

spectrometry (GC-MS)

Used in the chemical analysis of pigments

http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/pigments.html

Gamma-ray Spectroscopy

Cs137 and Sr90 Tests

A new technique was developed in 2008 by Russian scientists and could be applied to any artwork purported to have been painted prior to 1945.

Test for the presence of the radioactive isotopes Cs137 and Sr90 (not formed naturally) that were released from the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as from the nuclear tests that followed.

According to the Russian scientists, Cs137 and Sr90 “when released in the environment permeated soil and plant life and ended up in all post-war paintings through natural oils used as binding agents for paints.”

Brush strokes

The sweep of freedom (McShane)

Brush Stroke Patterns

Disputed Jackson Pollock “Red, Black and

Silver” (1956)

Forensic Science and Authentication

Fur from a bear rug

Pollock’s own hair

Sand unique to the area around his East Hampton home.

Francis O'Connor

Jackson Pollock Scholar

“I don’t think there’s a Pollock expert in world that would look at that painting and agree it was a Pollock,” Mr. O’Connor said at a symposium this month.

Not included in Pollock’s Catalogue Raisonné

Questions

1. The art market and the incidents of theft and forgery express a trivial economic value.True or False?

2. What is the title of a person who is a foremost authority on a painter? A connoisseur

3. The Isabella Gardner Museum paintings have been recovered.

True or False?

4. Who painted the most value stolen painting in the world? Vermeer

5. Which scientific technique is used to observe the under-sketch of an oil painting? Infrared Analysis

6. To which German high command officer did Han Meegeren sell a forgery? Hermann Göring

Works Cited or Consulted

Amore, Anthony M. The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World. New York: Macmillon, 2015.

The Art Loss Register. International Art and Antique Loss Register Limited, 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

“Art Theft.” Federal Bureau of Investigation. U. S. Gov, N.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Boser, Ultrich. The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft

“Choose a Time Period.” Pigments through the Ages. N.p., N.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Dolnick, Edward. The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper, 2009.

Ewell, Bernard. Artful Dodgers: Fraud & Foolishness in the Art Market. New York: Abbot Press, 2014.

Li, Jai. “Rhythmic Brushstrokes Distinguish van Gogh from His Contemporaries: Findings via AutomatedBrushstroke Extraction.” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

McShane, Thomas. Stolen Masterpiece Tracker: Inside the Billion Dollar World of Stolen Masterpieces. New York: Barricade Books, 2006

“The Naked Eye.” Analytic Tools and Technologies for Examining Tudor and Jacobean Painting. Yale Center for British Art, N.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

“Scientific Techniques.” Fake or Fortune? BBC, 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

“Top 200 Art Collectors Worldwide for 2015, Part One.” Artnet News. Artnet Worldwide, 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

“Vermeer’s Palate.” The Essential Vermeer 2.0. N.p., 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.