As we have stated before, the collector is partially responsible if excellent imitators sometimes turn into fakers. Ask the forger how it was that he became such, and nine times out of ten you will either hear that he was tired of seeing others make indecent profits out of his work, or that he was prompted by the consideration that there were fools ready to pay ten times the value of his work, provided he did not claim authorship, and would pretend his work was antique. Curiously enough, when questioned about the beginning of their fraudulent profession, some will speak of their transition from honesty to dishonesty with the reticence of a woman gone astray; others, perhaps the larger number, are boastful and inclined to glory in the success accorded to their fakes.

La Rochefoucauld has written in his Maximes that it is easier to deceive oneself than others. The vaunting class of fakers have somewhat reversed the terms of this saying, their common tenet being that it is easier to cheat others than to cheat oneself. This maxim, however, gives the faker undue confidence and a too prolific activity in creating sham masterpieces, and eventually contributes to the exposure of his fraud and the final ruin of what he considers, and what has proved to be, a most remunerative business. Many discoveries of falsified chefs-d’œuvre are due to over-productiveness of the faker. His self-confidence augmenting his activity to alarming proportions, it naturally increases the probability of discovery.

However, the faker is perforce a close-mouthed fellow, always on his guard and very rarely taken, as one might say, by surprise. Nevertheless he too possesses what might be called in fanciful metaphor the Achilles’ vulnerable spot where his silence may be attacked: it is his pride that must be tickled.

It was an aim of mine in the past to trace forgery in art to its origin. Not exactly as a hobby but in the belief that in these days it is important to know how works of art are imitated and faked, that it is part of modern connoisseurship in fact. To-day one must learn how to detect forgeries just as one must learn how to admire genuine art.

Forgery museums, intelligently organized, would be far more interesting—and more original—to-day than the various galleries of fine arts.

On more than one occasion after having traced the forger, the above system of flattering his vanity has extorted an unexpected confidence. To give an instance: some time ago the Italian market began to be infested by good imitations of bronze figures of the type of the Paduan school. An antiquary, from whom I have the story, traced the forger to Modena and called upon the fellow whom he held in suspicion. At first he had no clue, but finally, becoming friendly, he happened to surprise a confession from him under the following circumstances. It must be noted that a faker will talk freely on the subject of forgery, never presuming to be discovered and always as an outsider. Speaking of imitations, the antiquary expressed his surprise at the sure modelling and most convincing patina of some recent imitations he had seen. He explained that the imitation was really so good that he himself had been deceived by a small group representing a nymph and satyr. Circumstances alone had saved him at the last moment from being taken in and giving his opinion by attributing the bronze to Andrea Briosco. The piece to be sure was convincing enough to pass for one of the best works Briosco ever conceived. It was really worth the extravagant sums collectors are willing to pay for Briosco’s piece, called il Riccio, even though it was modern.

“Perhaps it was worth it,” remarked the artist with the characteristic rebellious accent peculiar to successful fakers.

This first burst of self-pride, properly nourished by the other with eulogies of the great artist who had modelled the group, drew forth the desired disclosure. When the antiquary remarked:

“That group ought to bring a big price. If collectors were not, generally speaking, so utterly deprived of true artistic sense, if they were not——”

“Such a pack of fools and snobs,” interrupted the artist.

The chink in the armour of silence was now discovered. Though without giving a hint as to his craft or the recipe of his wonderful patina, upon promise of silence with regard to his name, he proudly acknowledged authorship of the bronze group supposed to be of the school of Padua, and finally offered to show other pieces ready to enter the world of fakes, finished and ready to go and play the part of masterpieces of the Renaissance.

When the artist was asked how he managed to dispose of his faked goods, he averred that that part of the business belonged to the dealer. A specialist like himself, he said, had nothing to do with that side. The only compact he had made was with his own conscience, being perfectly aware that he was handsomely paid and that his agent realized three times as much.

According to him, even museums were buying spurious works of art, and labelling them with pompous attributions, knowing all the while that they were not authentic.

We quote this as a mere incident to show the view and supercilious attitude taken by the faker with regard to his art.

Incidentally and from the same source came the information that some well-imitated octagonal tables that had fetched high prices in the antique furniture market as real Quattrocento work were made in Bologna, and that the old patina and blunt corners were acquired by real use, the tables being lent for a time to cheap restaurants and the shops of sausage-dealers. The bronze faker of Modena possessed one of these tables which showed a casual knife cut and the abuse of age. To make the piece more handsomely suggestive, upon the top of the table there had been roughly scratched with a nail a square of the geometrical lines of the old game of “Filetto.” One could easily work up one’s fancy before that perpetrated abuse and imagine crowds of lansquesnets or inveterate dice-throwers.

When asked why he did not put his signature to such excellent work as his, that it would certainly be valued on its own merits, he shook his head and repeated the refrain so often heard from successful fakers that the time of the old-fashioned intelligent and art-loving collectors had passed, that collecting was nowadays nothing but a fad, that the modern collector is only a pretender. In proof of his assertion he referred to the then recent incident.

“See what happened to Donatello’s puttino in London.”

For those who may have forgotten the incident, we will recall how a little bronze statue by Donatello was vainly offered for sale to the London dealers. This statue was missing from the baptistery of San Francesco of Siena. The statuette represented a puttino (boy) and, hardly a foot high, had been stolen from the church at Siena in the beginning of the nineteenth century. It mysteriously found its way to London, where it was in all probability buried and forgotten in some private collection for three-score years or more. When the forgotten statue suddenly emerged from its nook of oblivion it was offered for sale simply as an old bronze, but being taken for a modern imitation it fetched no decent price. A Bond Street specialist refused it at two thousand francs. The Donatello was finally bought for 12,000 francs by the Berlin Museum, this being about the fiftieth part of its present value.

It is curious to hear the various opinions entertained by collectors and art lovers concerning faking and its alarming and increasing success. An old collector who had, no doubt like so many of his colleagues, learned his lesson through being duped, unhesitatingly declared that faking is a grand art with a reason for existence as it seems to meet a real need of society, the need of being, as it were, deluded and cheated by elegance. Queer ethics answering to the Latin saying: Vulgus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur (The crowd likes to be deceived, let it be deceived!).

A former curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum used to pay due tribute to the art of good imitators and fakers, who had succeeded in deceiving the vigilant eye of the guardians of museums, by stating that imitations are really too good to be mistaken for antiques, much better, indeed, than some of the examples of the art they would falsify.

The really experienced collector is inclined to look upon faking as a huge joke to be played on greenhorns and the inexperienced, even although some of the silent torpedoes of faking do triumphantly succeed in hitting people who are iron-clad with knowledge.

Novices take two opposite views of the matter. One class is positively ashamed of having been “taken in,” and hides the fact by concealing the proof of his ignorance in a dark corner of the house; the other, viewing the deception in a more business-like way, has recourse to the courts with more or less happy results. The latter class is naturally inclined to favour the greatest possible severity of the law.

In some of the cases in which the tribunals are called upon to pass judgment, one is inclined to wonder whether in pronouncing a severe sentence on the culprit, the magistrates do not feel like laughing up their sleeve at the supine foolishness of the plaintiff.

The case of M. Chasles, a celebrated and highly esteemed mathematician and member of the Paris Institut, furnishes us with proof of how a man can be great in his own speciality, yet likely to be taken in under peculiar and rather astonishing circumstances.

Monsieur Chasles had apparently taken to autograph-hunting, one of the most dangerous pursuits a mere dilettante can dream of. His career at the beginning was perhaps that of any other neophyte, and except for the astonishing sequence, might belong to the trite record of daily happenings on the unsafe side of curio-hunting.

The celebrated mathematician had hardly gathered his first autographs when to his misfortune he met with a certain Vrain-Lucas, an imposter whose talent fitted to perfection the over-trusting mathematician.

But for the documentary evidence of the trial (quoted by Paul Eudel in his book, Le Truquage), it would be utterly incredible that anyone, particularly a learned man, could be gulled to such an extent. Yet on the 16th of February, 1869, Monsieur Chasles appeared before the Paris Court of Justice as a plaintiff, and the public discussion of the case—which ended in the condemnation of the defendant, Vrain-Lucas, to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 500 francs with costs—clearly divulged how the eminent professor had been the victim of le sieur Vrain-Lucas, a semi-learned man of unquestionable talent and a stupendous and fertile power of invention. For the total sum of 140,000 francs he had sold to his client would-be authentic autographs and pretended indisputable original manuscripts—really the most extraordinary pieces a collector ever dreamt of!

Among other things there was included: a private letter of Alexander the Great addressed to Aristotle; a letter of Cleopatra to Julius Cæsar, informing the Roman Dictator that their son “Cesarion” was getting on very well; a missive of Lazarus to St. Peter; also a lengthy epistle addressed to Lazarus by Mary Magdalen. It should be added that the letters were written in French and in what might be styled an eighteenth-century jargon, that Alexander addressed Aristotle as Mon Ami and Cleopatra scribbled to Cæsar: Notre fils Cesarion va bien. Lazarus, no less a scholar in the Gallic idiom, and to whom, maybe, a miraculous resurrection had prompted a new personality, writes to St. Peter in the spirit of a rhetorician and a prig, speaking of Cicero’s oratory and Cæsar’s writings, getting excited and anathematic on Druidic rites and their cruel habit de sacrifier des hommes saulœvaiges.

Mary Magdalen, who begins her letter with a mon très aimé frère Lazarus, ce que me mandez de Petrus l’apostre de notre doux Jesus, is supposed to be writing from Marseilles and thus would appear to be the only one out of the many who can logically indulge in French, the jargon-bouillabaisse that Vrain-Lucas lent to the gallant array of his personages.

After such a practical joke played on the excellent good faith of M. Chasles, some of the other autographs seem tame. The package, however, also contained scraps jotted down by Alcibiades and Pericles, a full confession of Judas Iscariot’s crime written by himself to Mary Magdalen before passing the rope round his neck; a letter of Pontius Pilate addressed to Tiberius expressing his sorrow for the death of Christ. Other astounding pieces of this now famous collection were: a passport signed by Vercingetorix, a poem of Abelard and some love-letters addressed by Laura to Petrarch, as well as many other historical documents down to a manuscript of Pascal and an exchange of letters between the French scientist and Newton on the laws of gravitation, the Frenchman claiming the discovery as his own.

The latter manuscript caused a memorable polemic between the savants of London and Paris, a regular tournament of clever arguing among the scholars of the two countries, which finally led to the discovery of the huge fraud of which M. Chasles was the assigned but unresigned victim.

The chance way the imposture was exposed makes one wonder how it was possible for the case to have the honour of serious discussion among scientists. Among other historical blunders is the supposition that Newton could have exchanged letters with Pascal on the laws of gravitation. The former being but nine years old when Pascal died, he had certainly not yet given his mind to the observations bringing about his marvellous discovery. Further, as an example of gravitation, Pascal relates that he has noticed how in a cup of coffee the bubbles are attracted toward the edge of the receptacle. It is known that coffee was imported into France some nine years after the death of the great French philosopher and mathematician.

Leaving the man who does really artistic work we are now introduced to the majority of the class, mere fabricators of artistic pastiches, which notwithstanding complete absence of meritorious qualities are nevertheless effective decoys for unwary art lovers.

To this legion belong, of course, the most mediocre painters and sculptors, those whose chief cunning lies in the transference of age to their modern fabrications. They are guided in their work mostly by a considerable amount of practice in restoring old paintings, marbles, stuccoes, and so forth.

There is also a peculiar type of impostor who plays his tricks solely for the fun of it, a curious type who for the joy of having cheated some one, will deny himself the pleasure of revealing his name and glory in his success.

To this stamp must have belonged M. A. Maillet, a distinguished chemist who in 1864 took the trouble to publish a book on antediluvian excavations, for no other purpose evidently than to fool scholars given to that particular study. Needless to say the volume met with astonishing success. Among reproductions of genuine antediluvian relics, the eminent chemist interspersed his writing with spurious and fantastic illustrations of pretended finds of his own invention. They consisted of carved bones with figures, symbols and mysterious writings.

To say that no polemic or learned appreciation of the volume followed its publication would be to slander the too easily kindled enthusiasm of learned specialists. As usual the polemic revealed the true character of the volume, but before reaching its conclusion there was more than one reputation sullied and more than one scientist who lost caste. The perplexity and chaotic confusion caused by the publication was felt by M. A. Maillet to be ample recompense for his labour and expense.

The jovial faker, who is out solely for the fun of making game of some one, is no modern invention. Notably in Italy it is not uncommon to find a Greek or Latin inscription, traced centuries ago, with no apparent purpose than that of puzzling posterity, or putting historians off the scent. This would seem to be a still more remarkable form of faking, as the author not only derives no profit whatever from his trouble, but is not at all likely to be present to enjoy the result of his dupery.

Even among these mysterious helpers of the trade in curios—those who work for their living—they are rarely deprived of that facetious spirit that gives them a relish for some brilliant case of deception. Their joy is not wholly permeated by venal considerations.

There is no question but that some fakers go to work like true sportsmen. Hearing them boast, or describe some of their successful comedies in which they have been author, actor and manager all in one, it is not difficult to deduce that the only genuine thing to spur their imagination and activity is the desire to cheat any and everybody willing to be convinced by them or their work.

The chief characteristics of some of these comedies, which often necessitate the help of the faker’s bosom friend, the dealer or go-between, are pluck and an uncommon knowledge of the psychology of collectors. In more than one instance psychology would appear to have actually made the impossible become possible.

The story of the forged Rameses is still floating as a tradition in the gossipy world of antiquities in Paris. In his work, Le Truquage, Paul Eudel relates the anecdote in all its amusing detail.

A Parisian collector was, it seems, the happy owner of the most complete collection of Egyptian fine art objects. Not a specimen was missing apparently. But, as Eudel observes, “Is a collector ever ready to call his collection complete?” A collection is like a literary work which never seems to go beyond the “preface,” and there is no limit to it.

The collector in question had, however, set his limit, deciding that his collection might be considered complete as soon as he had secured one of those serene-looking, colossal Egyptian statues with which to ornament and complete the courtyard of the mansion housing his collection.

To be rich, to have a fixed desire and to blazen forth one’s particular hobby is a dangerous combination of ingredients in the world of curio-dealing, especially with the ever-ready and active faker close to hand.

To gratify this collector’s hobby an informant turned up one day to report that near Thebes a splendid statue of heroic proportions had been discovered. It was said to be the effigy of a Rameses in all its impassive beauty. Having knowledge of the collector’s penchant the informant’s agent in Egypt had kept back the secret of the discovery. In this way the collector was given the first refusal, the statue was all ready to be shipped, the whole at the reasonable price of a hundred thousand francs.

As usual the proposal was accompanied with convincing documents, stamped letters, descriptive memoranda and so forth. Within view of a long-desired ornament, the collector was easily induced to take part in the transaction to be carried on with the usual secrecy, upon the condition that the statue should be taken straight to his house on its arrival, and in such a way as to preclude all knowledge on the part of others.

Anyone unacquainted with the psychology of collectors—something that never happens to fakers—might be inclined to imagine that the schemer would try to hasten the conclusion of the business so elaborately planned, for fear the buyer might change his mind or have his eyes opened in some way. But our man knew that the collector would speak to no one, lest he might lose the rare chance offered him, and also that the longer the delay, the more obstacles met with or surmounted, the keener would he become to possess the exceptional “find.”

Finally, when the arrival of the statue was announced and it reached the Paris railway station in due time, the collector, suspicious and afraid like all true art lovers, insisted that it should be conveyed to his house by night.

After so much picturesque mystery the dénouement came, as usual, too late and in the most banal manner. The fraud was exposed on the very day of the exhibition, and the enraged collector started an energetic search for the culprits, but the birds had flown—he only found the empty cage, namely the atelier in a neighbouring street where his Rameses had been given birth. The debris of the would-be Oriental granite still strewed the floor.

“Sic transit——”

The faker and the forger are not prone to repentance. Vrain-Lucas, who had made himself notorious by cheating M. Chasles, had hardly regained his liberty after serving his term before he was again called to answer for another fraud. For a poor provincial priest he had falsified a whole genealogical tree.

Paul Eudel relates of one Oriental faker who proved himself as impenitent as resourceful. Clever and gifted with the peculiar shrewdness of the Oriental, he made his first coup by selling to the German Emperor some Moabite pottery which had certainly never been on the shores of the Jordan nor on the coast of the Dead Sea. This clever piece of trickery was recently discovered by the eminent Orientalist M. Clermont-Ganneau.

Back in Jerusalem and silent for a time, he next appeared in Europe offering the savants a most astonishing relic. Quite unabashed by the exposure of the Moabite pottery, he went straight to Berlin to offer some old passages of the Bible of most authentic character. They were written on narrow strips of leather supposed to have been found on a mummy.

Scholars examined the precious relics with care and silently concluded to decline to enter into the bargain. The precious document, though evidently forged, had been falsified on a piece of very old leather, the only part unquestionably aged.

The surprising part was that the culprit was not at all discouraged by the first collapse of his scheme but went to London, where he offered his Biblical find to the British Museum for the trifling sum of a million pounds sterling.

The plan very nearly succeeded. Daily papers became excited over the discovery of the rare Moabite manuscript, a document dating from at least the eighth or ninth century before Christ.

The learned Dr. Ginsburg, who set himself to the task of deciphering the obscure and indistinct characters of the worn-out leather strips, recognized in them a fragment of the fifth book of the Pentateuch. When M. Clermont-Ganneau came to examine the document he declared it for many reasons to be a daring forgery.

Apart from the fact that the strips could not have enwrapped a mummy, as neither Hebrews nor Phœnicians had the custom of embalming their dead, the leather said to have been found in Palestine could hardly have withstood for so long the action of a damp climate. Such preservation would only be possible in the dry climate of the desert or some one of the favoured parts of Egypt.

It was discovered at the same time that the strips of the famous manuscript had been cut from a piece of leather some two centuries old—the erased original characters still being traceable—upon which the Biblical fragments had been copied in the Moabite alphabet.

The artist with a vaster range and wider scope for duping is, without doubt, the one working on artistic frauds, as the proportion stands at one collector of manuscripts to a thousand art collectors. It is immaterial to him whether he meets specialists or eclectics in this large field—they are all good game. The facility with which he is thus able to dispose of his wares makes him still more refractory to reform. Silent, often obscure, always mysterious, he claims for his activity what must appear to him a noble justification: he paradoxically believes himself to be a real factor of his client’s happiness. But for him some of the collectors would find it tremendously difficult to possess masterpieces, and if they die happy without realizing that they have been fooled, where is the difference?

After all, in this fool’s paradise they are happy and undisturbed—so very few realize either that they have been totally duped by a fake or partially cheated by over-restoration. Most of the modern collectors too often resemble that type of art lover: