HTA-0614: Henry's Forged Art Collection

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Summary

Henry showcases his personal collection of forged artwork and discusses the world of art forgery.

Full Transcript

00:03
What a collection.

00:05
Magnificent masterpieces gathered in one small south of Market Gallery.

00:09
Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani, Monet.

00:12
Each is a gem, and not one of them is real.

00:16
I never offered a painting or a drawing to a museum who didn't buy it.

00:23
Elmer de Horry created canvases that captured the essence of the artists,

00:28
the lines of Matisse, the colors of Brock, the power of Picasso.

00:31
One could call de Horry an artist's artist,

00:35
but really he was just a darn good forger.

00:49
John Pyle knew de Horry and collects his work,

00:52
forgeries the artist created out of economic necessity starting in pre-war Paris.

00:57
He had a sort of a French cafe scene.

01:01
That's what he painted, but he couldn't sell them.

01:04
Like most art students, Elmere had studied the masters by copying their works,

01:09
and here he found that his true metier, his genius, his destiny, was forgery.

01:14
Living in his little studio on the left bank,

01:17
he ran off a little Picasso, pen and ink.

01:20
An aristocrat came from London and said,

01:22
oh, it's a lovely Picasso, would you like to sell it?

01:24
He didn't say it was a Picasso,

01:26
So she went away and said, oh, my friend loves that in London.

01:28
Do you have any more?

01:30
It began there.

01:31
It's easier than painting my own stuff.

01:34
If he'd never gotten into forgery, could he have been a great artist in his own right?

01:38
He'd have starved like many of the artists there.

01:41
Instead, he prospered, diversifying to other salable artists.

01:44
Dufy, Sisley, Monet.

01:46
De Horry was a descendant of threadbare Hungarian aristocrats

01:49
and claimed to be liquidating masterpieces from the family estate.

01:53
The experts were fooled.

01:55
He never copied, he did in the style of, so therefore they were able to sell them as originals.

02:02
It's not something that, you know, oh well that one, I've seen that one somewhere else before.

02:06
But he certainly captured the artist when he painted.

02:09
I mean, he was very meticulous.

02:11
Old frames, old canvases, and this paper was for Matisse only, French government paper.

02:20
They went to the printer and bought this paper illegally from the printer.

02:26
They paid so much money.

02:28
In 1961, De Horry moved to Ibiza, Spain,

02:31
and allowed two greedy business partners to handle most of the marketing.

02:35
He worked at night.

02:36
He didn't work in the daytime.

02:37
I mean, he was wealthy as far as everybody was concerned.

02:40
So he would be wandering around cafes and mills and parties.

02:45
But at night, he would go and paint secretly.

02:48
They would send the orders down from Paris.

02:51
So many Matissas and Dufets and a couple of these and a couple of Modiglianis because we're going to America.

02:57
The oil millionaires are interested.

02:59
They sent an order down to Ibiza and said, look, we need half a dozen Matissas for a show.

03:04
So they rushed these paintings, not quite dry, to the show in France.

03:09
And one of the curators was cleaning and said, God, this is wet.

03:14
They called the daughter and she rushed over and said, my father never painted that.

03:18
Where did it come from?

03:20
The scam collapsed.

03:22
Elmire de Horry laid low in Ibiza,

03:24
where he found fame, if not riches.

03:26
Orson Welles made a movie about him.

03:28
Author Clifford Irving wrote a book about the famous faker.

03:32
Then, what a coincidence, Irving fabricated his next book,

03:36
a Howard Hughes biography that would land the author in jail.

03:40
That was a fate which de Horry himself somehow managed to elude.

03:43
They were going to extradite him to France,

03:46
but they never did because it was a little bit too embarrassing

03:47
to bring back someone that faked the French art world,

03:51
which is just not done.

03:52
They had someone at the Louvre even that said,

03:54
yes, that's a real one.

03:56
He had made a few dollars.

03:58
Americans would come over, especially,

04:00
once the book came out,

04:02
and say, would you do me a nice,

04:04
a nice watercolor with fruit here and there,

04:07
made to order.

04:09
Meanwhile, Spain was trying to deport De Horry,

04:12
and that threat led to his death at the age of 70,

04:16
death by fakery.

04:18
It was supposedly a suicide, but it was going to be faked, of all things, so that he would get sympathy and they would say, oh, God, he's a sick man, let him stay in Spain.

04:28
His lover was going to come back and rescue him at the 10th hour, going to save him, but the lover never came back.

04:36
He took off with the paintings and Elmira died in 76 December in Ibiza.

04:44
Today, de Horry is recognized as a brilliant craftsman, if not an artistic genius.

04:49
His acknowledged forgeries are now selling for tens of thousands of dollars.

04:54
Now we know that these are fakes. Why are they worth so much?

04:59
Well, he's dead.

05:02
Elmere de Horry's are probably the best fakes on the market.

05:08
And those high prices have led us to the ultimate irony of Elmere's career.

05:13
fake duhoris. I wouldn't be surprised if people fake him. I've seen some funny-looking

05:20
Elmirs that said, "This is a duhori." I don't think so. I can tell a fake from a fake.

05:28
To be counterfeited, the ultimate tribute to history's greatest art forgerer that we know

05:34
of. I'm Henry Tenenbaum. Really.