More Fakes Emerge from German Forgery Case

The Art Newspaper has a new, longer list of forged works created by the Beltracchi gang. Dickinsons has already discovered it sold some fo these fakes:

The release of the list, with an additional 39 works, shows that Bateaux à Collioure, around 1905, by André Derain, sold at Christie’s London for £2m in 2007, was a forgery (Christie’s cited the “Knops Collection” as its provenance). […]

Berlin’s police believe that Christie’s auctioned several forgeries, including Heinrich Campendonk’s Mädchen mit Schwan, 1919 (for £67,500 in 1995); Emile Othon Friesz’s La Ciotat, 1907 (unsold in 2009); Auguste Herbin’s Femme Assise, 1918 (unsold in 1995; later auctioned for $90,500 in 1998 at Sotheby’s); and André Lhote’s Course de Cyclistes à Bordeaux, 1920 (for £16,000 in 1995, and subsequently for $107,000 at Sotheby’s in 1998). […]

The police evidence suggests Sotheby’s also unwittingly sold several Beltracchi forgeries, most notably Max Ernst’s Tremblement de Terre, 1925, which made $1.1m in November 2009. The painting’s authenticity was confirmed by Werner Spies, an Ernst expert who is being sued for damages over the work in a civil court in Nanterre. Sotheby’s offered other works: Herbin’s Femme et Enfants, 1917 (for £56,500 in 1993); Emil Filla’s Homme et Oiseaux, 1932 (unsold in 1989); and Henri Hayden’sNature Morte à la Guitare, 1918 (for £45,000 in 1992).

Both auction houses have agreed to compensate several buyers, says René Allonge, the case’s lead detective at Berlin’s state criminal office. Sotheby’s declined to comment.