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.

True Scale of Alleged German Forgeries Revealed (The Art Newspaper)