18 maanden voor 10 vervalsingen

Agent Jason Helmn met een van de vervalsingen

Afgelopen week is in Engeland Rizvan Rachman veroordeeld tot 18 maanden cel voor het verkopen van valse schilderijen. Jason Helmn, de agent hierboven op de foto, zei:

"To be able to pass off fake paintings as genuine paintings and also provide documentation and more importantly give provenance for the paintings is very clever indeed.
"I'm sure he did a lot of research before he actually sold these paintings."
"Mr Rahman's reputation was pretty renowned in art world. After the first couple of galleries I contacted, it quickly became quite obvious that Mr Rahman was well-known and his reputation for selling fake paintings went before him."
"He hasn't admitted to forging them himself but we suspect he may have done that."

Wat ik zo bijzonder vind aan de kunstwereld is toch wel de manier waarop er met vervalsingen om gegaan wordt. Uit de artikelen (Delicious Stack) die ik er nu over lees, blijkt alweer dat galeries en veilinghuizen vervalsingen wel opmerken, maar het schilderij dan gewoon terug sturen naar de aanbieder en het geld terug vorderen. Uit Provenance was me ook al duidelijk dat het niet gebruikelijk om dan nader onderzoek te laten instellen.
Uiteindelijk is Rachman definitief tegen de lamp gelopen omdat hij een schilderij van Jack Pender verkocht aan David Lay, een goede vriend van de schilder.

Realising it was a fake, he contacted the artists' son, Robin Pender, and together the two men researched Rahman's collection and passed their findings on to the police.[...]
Mr Lay said: 'I've read that the famous auction houses like Sotheby's, Christie's and Bonham's were the ones who spotted this - but it was a Penzance boy.
'I just thought there was something not quite right.
'I knew Jack and I know Robin. Robin and I looked at some databases and realised there were between a dozen and 20 Jack Pender fakes doing the rounds.
'I was incensed, because it quickly became obvious I was dealing with a person who was trying to deceive me and he'd already deceived others."
Robin Pender said: 'It wasn't immediately obvious they were fakes.
'I can understand why people were taken in, but I could tell by a combination of things that they weren't Dad's.
'For example the shape of the boats, the style and the way the whole thing seemed over embellished.
'I'm really pleased we cleaned up the market, because people were being conned.'

Wie houdt nu wie voor de gek, vraag je je dan toch af.

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Gelezen: L. Salisbury & A. Sujo - Provenance