erroneous provenance (artwork) (Q117287471)
erroneous chronology of ownership
- fake provenance
- provenance error
- false provenance
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| English | erroneous provenance (artwork) |
erroneous chronology of ownership |
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In the early '90s, the sisters, Helene and Jeanette, visited the leading auction houses and informed them about the art collection they had supposedly inherited from their grandfather, Werner Jägers. As the story went, he had been a client of Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937, the famous Jewish gallery owner whose business was seized by the Nazis. Jägers had supposedly bought art from Flechtheim and hid it during the war in the mountains near Cologne.The collection’s authenticity was confirmed by documents and photographs -- also phony. Cleverly, the ring almost exclusively forged paintings that had once existed but had been registered as missing after the turmoil of World War II. Later on the sisters brought along a second large art collection, this one dubbed the “Knops Collection," which is today considered to be totally made up, too. (English)
After months of investigation they are now on trial in Cologne, Germany: the four members of the Jägers Collection Forgery Ring, which for almost two decades made fake modernist paintings and smoothly slipped them into the international art market. Fourteen pictures have now been clearly identified as coming from the hand of the alleged fraudster, Wolfgang Beltracchi, with another 33 cases under investigation. The cost so far: €16 million in forgeries, resulting in total damages of €27 million.The list of fakes reads like a Who’s Who of Modern Art. (English)
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The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art became involved in investigating the painting's provenance for the Emdens. In a statement to the Houston Chronicle, the organization said the museum's director in 2021 falsely denied the Bellotto in the collection as a the one the Emdens are seeking but said at that same time "the (museum’s) own website listed both Max Emden, and Karl Haberstock, Hitler’s main art buyer, in the chain of title." (English)
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Unbeknownst to Reed, the “View of Beverwijk” was listed in a book on Hungarian war losses — but with the incorrect image attached. Then, in 2019, came a small break in the case. A Hungarian scholar emailed the MFA to let them know that the painting had once belonged to an art collector named Frigyes Glück. (English)
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Experts later traced the painting back to the 18th century where they identified two prior French owners. But the painting was mistakenly thought to have been in a private collection for more than 100 years until the 1983 sale at Christie’s.Actually, as referenced in the Met’s new provenance for the work, it was held in a private collection in Britain in the mid-1920s when Mr. Aram bought it. (English)
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Boies often drew curt replies of “I don’t know” from museum officials when he asked repeatedly if they could explain how the painting arrived in the United States and why, when Thyssen-Bornemisza bought it from a New York dealer, he didn’t seem to know who the seller was. Also why, in one document, the baron indicated the transaction took place in Paris when it really happened in New York.“Sometimes an error is just an error,” one of the museum’s provenance experts, Laurie Stein, said of the Paris-New York discrepancy. (English)
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The painting provides an example of the ways that unscrupulous sellers mask the provenance of paintings seized by the Gestapo. (English)
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When Juan Carlos received an unlikely tip-off in the early 2000s from a US art contact, he became convinced Lady with a Fan once belonged to his grandfather.“As soon as I looked at the NGV’s provenance online, I knew it was wrong,” he tells The Australian. “The record listed the name Bromberg, which was connected to my family through my great-grandparents … It was the same family and they co-financed part of the art collection.”Instead of Emden, the NGV listed a Dr Grunden of Hamburg.The 75-year-old wrote to the gallery claiming “Dr Grunden” had been written in error when the painting’s provenance should display the name of his grandfather, “Dr Max Emden”.“They really thought I was a mad clown. But when they went back to their records, they realised I was absolutely right. There had been a typographical error. It should have read ‘Emden’.” (English)
30 March 2023
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The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) announced today that it will return four objects it purchased from Subhash Kapoor, a New York City art dealer under investigation by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security for illegally importing and selling stolen antiquities and other art objects and for providing false histories of prior ownership (or provenance) to buyers. (English)
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The non-specialist collector allegedly planned to sell the forgeries, whose “provenance” was outlined in accompanying false documentation, to black market buyers in Germany, Switzerland and Mexico in exchange for a 10 percent commission, per the statement. Buyers had already lined up to purchase the faked goods. (English)
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“When the German art dealer received the Emden 1025 Pirna, he created a false provenance to make the work marketable and removed identifying labels from the back of the painting and frame that would have shown Emden’s prior ownership and the Führermuseum’s subsequent possession,” the lawsuit says. “In 1952, the dealer sold the Emden 1025 Pirna under the false provenance to a prominent U.S. collector.” (English)
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Kapoor, 72, was renowned among New York dealers for his ability to procure museum-quality goods until his initial arrest on trafficking charges in 2011 in Germany. Subsequent investigations revealed the scope of his criminal dealings. Some 2,600 objects—smuggled from Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Thailand using false provenance papers—were confiscated from several storage locations owned by Kapoor in New York City. Thousands more are still missing. (English)
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But in total 19 of these, formerly very rare, Alexander decadrachms were sold - 11 of them by Roma Numismatics - with the provenance of the coins listed as either "from a private Canadian collection" or "ex-private European collection".In 2019, the BBC approached Beale at his office in London and challenged him directly about the provenances for the decadrachms listed on Roma Numismatics' auction site. The BBC informed Beale that it suspected the coins had come from the "Gaza Hoard", which meant that it was illegal to sell them.Auction houses are expected to carry out due diligence to establish a coin's provenance. (English)
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After the Stern heirs filed their lawsuit in December, a Metropolitan Museum of Art spokesperson told The Art Newspaper: “At no time during the Met’s ownership of the painting was there any record that it had once belonged to the Stern family. Indeed, that information did not become available until several decades after the painting left the museum's collection (English)
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The heirs claimed in the lawsuit that the painting was in the possession of Julius Böhler (no relation), a Munich dealer who, according to American authorities in 1946, was implicated in art looting. They said Sotheby’s “misled the public,” tracing the provenance through the wrong gallery, “perpetuating the very cycle of injustice and exploitation that began in 1938 and that the international and national restitution laws and policies were designed to prevent.”Sotheby’s is pleading “human error.” (English)
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Art: Scent of Scandal (English)
26 October 1962
15 December 2024
TIME
A more bizarre assemblage of omissions, misspellings and mysterious documentation could hardly be imagined. While the catalogue devoted paragraphs to the pedigrees of Chrysler’s many acknowledged masterpieces—when they were painted, what collectors had owned them, when and where they had been sold, and what scholarly publications had mentioned or reproduced them—scores of paintings simply had a couple of lines giving date and gallery of purchase. A few of these paintings came from Manhattan Dealer Harry B. Yotnakparian, who simply let Chrysler make whatever attribution he wanted to on the assumption that a collector of such experience would surely know what he was doing. The vast majority of suspect paintings came from another Manhattan dealer named Joly Hartert. (English)
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Helene says that she came up with the fake history on the spot after a Christie’s expert asked her to explain the provenance of Girl with Swan, purportedly by Heinrich Campendonk. “I hadn’t planned anything,” she insists. But the Jägers story “made sense. My grandfather had his business in Cologne. Flechtheim had a gallery in Cologne. My grandfather lived in Krefeld, and so did the artist. So I could easily say they were all connected.” To lend her account credibility, Wolfgang staged a black-and-white photograph of Helene impersonating her grandmother, Josefine Jägers. Wearing a black dress and a strand of pearls, “Josefine” posed in front of several paintings from the “Jägers collection.” (English)
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The Mystery of the Painting in Gallery 634 (English)
8 February 2020
5 February 2026
Graham Bowley
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D.A. Bragg Announces Return Of 43 Antiquities To The People Of Türkiye (English)
10 December 2025
29 March 2026
Working with Switzerland-based trafficker George Zakos and New York-and-Paris-based trafficker Robert Hecht, they unlawfully removed the looted antiquities from Türkiye, transporting them to Switzerland or the United Kingdom, and then onward to the United States or other European destinations. Once the statues were in the United States, New York-based dealers such as Jerome Eisenberg’s Royal-Athena Galleries and the Merrin Gallery funneled the stolen Bubon bronzes into museum exhibitions and academic publications thereby laundering the pieces with newly crafted provenance. As the Bubon pieces graced the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Getty Museum, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Worcester Museum of Art, and the Fordham Museum of Art, the reputational value of the institutions that displayed the Bubon pieces increased and the financial value of the statues grew. (English)