Who really painted Vermeer’s pictures?
Some case studies concerning the difficulties of attribution
MúzeumCafé 18.
Painting Light, One of the most intriguing works in Painting Light, the exhibition of impressionist and post-impressionist works, which opened at the Albertina in Vienna last autumn and ran until February, was Claude Monet’s 1885 Bank of the Seine at Port-Villez. In fact, there were two versions on display! For almost fifty years one of the two apparently identical paintings was the pride of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, at least until 2007 when the other one turned up in a New York private collection. Naturally, the suddenly ‘duplicated’ works became the subject of intense investigation by a whole range of experts. The examinations confirmed that previously the German specialists had been seriously mistaken, that Monet’s own brush strokes were only manifest on the canvas held in America, and that the work in Cologne was only a clever copy, which to the naked eye perfectly reproduced the strokes of the original. Hungarians have perhaps heard the most about the false determination of authorship in connection with Piombo’s Portrait of a Man, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, and the related problems. Károly Pulszky (1853–1899), at the time the director of the National Picture Gallery, bought the early 16th-century work, previously part of the Scarpa collection in Italy, on behalf of the Fine Arts Museum. Although the portrait was earlier considered to be a work of Raffaello (1483–1520), when Pulszky acquired it at an Italian auction in 1895 it was rather attributed to Piombo. The issue of who was the real creator led to heavy criticism of Pulszky in the Hungarian press and the dispute even reached parliament. Understandably the question of attribution didn’t mean that the picture itself was any worse, but unfortunately in Hungary at the time very few people had heard of Piombo and even fewer knew that his works of art created in the second decade of the 16th century were on a par with the best paintings of Raffaello. The truth of this can be ascertained by anyone visiting the Fine Arts Museum and taking a look at Portrait of a Man in the permanent exhibition – though this wasn’t much help to Pulszky. As an effect of the persecution he suffered in connection with the matter, he became mentally deranged and although the courts dismissed all the charges brought against him a year later he committed suicide. Not very long ago specialists discovered on the chalk drawing entitled Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, which previously had been dated to the early 19th century, a fingerprint which is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. If it proves to be true that the fingerprint found on the unmarked drawing is really a trace of the Renaissance master, then according to experts the value of the work could rise to 150 million dollars. In 1974 a portrait of a male, believed to be the work of an unknown 16th-century painter, was sold at a Christie’s auction for 2,800 pounds. However, following research lasting for a number of years, specialists later identified the picture as a portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt by Hans Holbein (1497-1543), dating from around 1540. Thus in July 2006 it again came under the hammer at Christie’s, this time valued at between two and three million pounds. Yet this wasn’t the end of the story. At the time the Tate Britain was preparing a major Holbein exhibition and, due to some still existing doubts about its provenance, the painting was not selected as part of the display. In the event no buyer was found at the auction. At that point the London art dealer Mark Weiss, on the basis of further opinions articulated by specialists and restorers, had the picture accepted as an original work by Holbein and in spring 2007 he offered it for sale at his stand during one of the world’s largest international antiques fairs, the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht. His asking price was 5 million pounds. In the permanent exhibition of the Hungarian National Gallery there is an unsigned painting entitled Tabán, which has been reproduced many times and has been displayed at many foreign exhibitions, always as a work of Sándor Galimberti (1883–1915). The painting’s attribution, determined on the basis of its style, seemed so sure that it even appeared on the title page of a monograph about Galimberti. However, art historian Ferenc Matits later discovered a sketch of the painting, which he established beyond doubt was certainly not the work of Galimberti, but of János György Simon (1894–1968) who had lived outside Hungary since 1920 and thus was little known in the country. Clearly the painting made on the basis of the sketch must have been his work as well. As with Simon, so with the work of the painter József Pechán (1875–1922) – the situation, though not unduly common, is nevertheless rather characteristic of Hungary’s art trade. Just to highlight the most striking results, in December 1999 his Port had fetched 2.5 million at a Kieselbach Gallery auction. But in autumn 2001 one of his pictures sold for six million forints at the Polgár Gallery, while another went for 7.5 million in autumn 2007 at the Judit Virág Gallery. Questions of provenance would be much easier to address if there was an official office in Hungary for assessing works of art. But today none exists. The Hungarian National Gallery ceased this service in 1997 and the Museum of Fine Arts followed suit in 2008. Today there is no state institute which will accept responsibility for identifying the authenticity of a painter’s work. This task remains with the specialists of the galleries and auction houses (who are often, of course, also on the staff of museums). Naturally, the well-established, large firms give a guarantee and they promise to buy it back if the picture turns out to be a fake within five years. Nevertheless it has happened that immediately before an auction the police have turned up to seize paintings regarded as having “uncertain origins”. Another case involved art collector Emil Buschi, who had five paintings by Csontváry. Of those the Csontváry Museum in Pécs purchased the protected picture Fishing in Castellammare in May 1993. A year later the painting Child in Red Dress was also accepted as an original. Today it, too, can be seen in Pécs. A third picture was bought by a private collector and a fourth disappeared. The fifth, a 143 × 103 cm oil painting on canvas, depicts horse riders and a figure in a long white cloak standing around a solitary Lebanon cedar on a hill. Gábor Bellák, a Hungarian National Gallery art historian and a judicious painting expert, wrote about this work in his advisory note dated 1 August 2006: “By a version of the painting of the cedar, Bernáth must have meant this picture …” In 2009 Csontváry – a Captive of Legends by art historian Péter Molnos was published by the Kieselbach Gallery. The author makes no reference to the painting with the cedar, which, as he has said, he definitely does not regard as an authentic Csontváry. The Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam is presenting Van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers up to 22 August this year. Looking at the infamous, albeit famous pictures, which hardly represent any artistic value visitors may ask – how is it that even the best experts could not decide for so long who actually painted these works?