Chicago Mountebanks

Inspired, apparently, by revelations of the ease with which medieval Gothic art can be passed off to an unsuspecting public, it is authoritatively claimed that several great modern painters are being assiduously faked, and even that a ring of mountebanks in Chicago has disposed of thousands of fraudulent pictures to aspiring parvenus of the Middle West. These revelations have come out of a $50,000 damage suit brought by Bernard Devine, Chicago art dealer, against Professor Alfred Chatain, connoisseur, alleged leader in the fakery gang.

The favorite subjects of the fakers are:

1) Ralph Blakelock, one of our greatest American masters of landscape, who spent the last 20 years of his life in an insane asylum. True Blakelocks have been found in the most unexpected places, and these circumstances have made it easy to flood the market with false ones. A Philadelphia painter is said to have turned out hundreds of imitations, taking Blakelock's ideas, but painting them better than Blakelock himself could. Why a man of such talent should choose this unethical profession is unexplained. It was charged that three Blakelocks in the Chicago Art Institute are forgeries, but Albert Milch, New York specialist in Blakelocks, though admitting that the painter is incessantly faked, does not take these charges seriously. The Institute has the reputation of being the best gallery in the country for American works, its particular jewel being its great Inness room.

2) Childe Hassam, who, when confronted with a fake Hassam, cut the signature off with a knife. The method of faking is to take printed reproductions of his paintings, cut them up and piece them together in a new composition, and mechanically copy the peculiar spotty technique of this artist.

3) Elliott Daingerfield, Homer Martin, Alexander Wyatt, J. Francis Murphy, Bruce Crane, George Inness, Albert Ryder, and other American landscapists of the present or recent past.

4) Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, patron saint of Barbizon. It is said that there are more fake Corots in existence than real ones.