If she saw herself as an actress, she had found herself a dream role. And Helene rose to the occasion. She offered a painting called Mädchen mit Schwan (Girl with Swan) to Christie’s, and when they raised the topic of provenance, Helene smoothly explained the story of her grandfather Werner’s collection; to bolster the provenance, she pointed to a label that was affixed to the reverse of the painting that read “Sammlung Flechtheim” (Flechtheim Collection), and beneath it, “Heinrich Campendonk.” This was more than enough to convince the esteemed auction house’s expert, Dr. Andrea Firmenich, who authenticated the work. Christie’s proceeded to include Mädchen mit Schwan in its October 1995 auction of German and Austrian art, featuring it in its catalog and writing in the lot notes section: “This large colourful work is typical of Campendonk’s style between 1917 and 1919 when Flechtheim was his dealer.” It goes on: “The composition of a nude in a landscape with animals, a recurrent theme in Campendonk’s work, stands as a symbol of purity—both of Man’s unity in his natural state with Nature and of his original innocence in Paradise.” The lot notes conclude “Dr. Andrea Firmenich has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work.” The catalog lists the provenance of the painting as “Alfred Flechtheim, Dusseldorf” and “Werner Jaegers, Cologne” and states that the painting was exhibited in Düsseldorf at the Galerie Flechtheim in 1920. At the October 11, 1995, auction, held on King Street in London, the painting, lot number 158, sold within its estimated range at a price of $106,178.11
Works by Heinrich Campendonk figured prominently in the Jägers Collection. While the German Expressionist’s paintings regularly fetch prices in the six figures and more, he struggled with financial woes early in his career, falling out of favor with his parents, who had urged him to follow a more profitable path as a clothing designer. Fortunately, the break Campendonk needed soon came: in 1911, he caught the eye of none other than Alfred Flechtheim, who convinced him to move to Bavaria. Flechtheim provided him with a monthly stipend that brought stability to his life and allowed him to live in Sindelsdorf, near the homes of Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. This new setting and community had a positive impact on Campendonk’s career, influencing his work and elevating his place among the famous German Expressionists.12 So it’s certainly no surprise that a number of his masterpieces would end up in the hands of Flechtheim and, in turn, Werner Jägers.
Helene had other Campendonks for sale, one of which would eventually be purchased by legendary comedic actor Steve Martin. Aside from his success on the big screen, Martin is a passionate art collector and the author of a highly successful art-based novel, 2011’s An Object of Beauty. The book showcases the comic’s incisive observations of the world of fine art dealing in Manhattan, telling the story of a young art broker grappling with the moral issues of her chosen line of work; it also dabbles in art crime. At the center of the story is the world’s most valuable stolen painting: Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert, stolen in 1990 from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In 2004, the fine art–loving comedian paid $860,000 to Cazeau-Beraudiere, a Paris gallery, to add Campendonk’s Landschaft mit Pferden (Landscape with Horses) to his private art collection, which already included works by Picasso, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, and Edward Hopper.
The Campendonk painting from the Jägers Collection that made the most significant splash in the art world was undoubtedly Rotes Bild mit Pferden (Red Picture with Horses). Presented to Lempertz for auction by Helene’s sister Jeanette on behalf of the Jägers family, the painting was offered at auction on November 29, 2006, at its modern arts auction. Lempertz described the painting in its catalog as having been completed in 1914 and featuring “an incomplete vertical composition of a profile, half-length female nude with yellow mask and rooster” on back. The Lempertz lot notes went on to describe a woodcut label affixed to the reverse from the Flechtheim Collection: the same Sammlung Flechtheim label seen on the back of Mädchen mit Schwan. This one included the handwritten inscription in ink, “Heinrich Campendonk/Seeshaupt/Rotes Bild mit Pferden.” There were also stickers from the Sturm Gallery in Berlin and the Emil Richter Gallery in Dresden.
Based on the labels and the Jägers family’s backstory, Lempertz described the provenance of Rotes Bild mit Pferden as “Alfred Flechtheim; private collection, France, purchased from Flechtheim ca. 1930, since then in family possession.” Again, Dr. Andrea Firmenich’s work—this time in terms of her published study on Campendonk—was cited. Clearly, Jeanette, like her sister Helene, had done well in establishing the provenance of key pieces of her inheritance. And it paid dividends: Lempertz, which had listed an estimated price of 800,000 to 1.2 million euros for the painting, sold it at a “World Record Price” of 2.9 million euros to Trasteco Ltd. of Malta.13
Trasteco had no intention of taking chances with its huge investment. After speaking with Modern Art experts in Geneva from Artvera’s Gallery, the buyers decided to contact Lempertz seeking paperwork to establish solid provenance. Lempertz replied that they had authenticated the painting by speaking directly with none other than Heinrich Campendonk’s own son. Unsatisfied with this as the only testament as to the painting’s authenticity, Trasteco decided to contact an expert on Campendonk and looked no further than the painting’s lot notes. Dr. Andrea Firmenich had written her doctoral thesis on Campendonk and authenticated Mädchen mit Schwan for Christie’s. And while she had raved about that painting’s “intense, shining, expressive colorfulness,”14 something about Rotes Bild mit Pferden didn’t quite sit right with her. So she turned to science for answers and submitted the painting to the Doerner Institute in Munich, where results of their testing left chemists skeptical about the authenticity of the painting. They stopped short, however, of an outright condemnation.
With questions still unanswered, another technical analysis was commissioned through Friederike Grafin von Bruhle, who was working on behalf of the buyers.15 This time, the paintings were submitted to Dr. Nicholas Eastaugh. Dr. Eastaugh’s credentials for such work were impeccable. Before studying art conservation and art history at the esteemed Courtauld Institute of Art in London, he was trained as a physicist. Perhaps most significant to the task at hand, Eastaugh had a world-class background in the study of pigments. He cofounded the Pigmentum Project, a program dedicated to using a combination of science and art history to study pigments, and had been called upon by a number of museums, galleries, auction houses, and collectors to analyze works.16
Eastaugh’s results were definitive and startling: Rotes Bild mit Pferden could not be the work of Heinrich Campendonk. The testing confirmed the presence of a pigment—titanium dioxide white—used in the painting that was not available in 1914, when the painting was supposed to have been completed. Even the unfinished sketch on the back of the painting and described in the lot notes was a forgery, containing another period-inappropriate pigment, phthalocyanine green. “It was a normal job,” Eastaugh said. “It came in for analysis, I did my job, I wrote a report. The report came to the conclusion that it couldn’t possibly be what it was representing itself to be. So, to that end, the report was essentially saying that this painting’s a fake.”17
Still curious about the “Sammlung Flechtheim” labels, Firmenich had another idea: she reached out to modern art expert Ralph Jentsch in October 2008 to get his assessment of the sticker on the back of the painting. Jentsch was also a wise choice. As the managing director of the estate of Modernist painter George Grosz, Jentsch was well schooled in the subject of Flechtheim, from whose gallery Grosz paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. He knew well the appearance of the Flechtheim Gallery labels. Jentsch took a close look at the garish caricature of Flechtheim on the label on the reverse of Rotes Bild mit Pferden and his reaction was immediate: he burst out in laughter.18
Jentsch had no doubt that the label was a fake. Alfred Flechtheim was a man of impeccable taste and elegance. He’d never have used a label with such an image. Moreover, Jentsch knew that the label
s the art dealer did use bore no image of him whatsoever. “There is no way he would have permitted such a silly portrait,” Jentsch said.19 Firmenich asked Jentsch what he knew of the art collector Werner Jägers, who was said to have purchased a large collection of paintings from Flechtheim. Jentsch had never heard of him. Everything about the painting was faked. Yes, industrialist Werner Jägers did live in Cologne at the time of Alfred Flechtheim, but if the two had ever truly crossed paths, Jägers would have been but 16 years old and hardly in a position to amass a world-class collection of paintings. And though Jägers was, in fact, the grandfather of Helene, virtually everything else about her story was fiction. Far from an associate of Flechtheim, Jägers was a member of the Nazi Party with no known serious art collection.20 Furthermore, the art she offered for sale was not part of an old family inheritance, accumulated in a home belonging to the Jägers dynasty near Cologne in the Eifel Mountains. Rather, the entire collection was being created on the spot by her husband, Wolfgang Beltracchi. The attribution to Campendonk, the sketch on the reverse, and even the labels were all the creation of this master Modernist who also happened to be a master forger.
That Wolfgang Beltracchi is a skilled artist is beyond dispute. Now in his early 60s, he is an intriguing figure.21 With his shoulder-length graying hair and matching Vandyke beard, he looks every bit the master painter. Though a criminal, the man who is perhaps the world’s greatest living forger seems an almost endearing figure. He’s full of wit and playfulness and has an almost impish attitude toward the years he spent creating frauds for an untold number of willing dupes all too eager to hand over a fortune for what he created in the name of another.
The young Wolfgang, whose surname was Fischer before he adopted the name of his wife, took up painting in his preteen years. The son of a man he described as a church painter and restorer, he tells of watching his father copy the works of the Old Masters and vividly recalls pointing out his father’s mistakes and questioning his process. He describes himself as a sort of prodigy who displayed signs of talent so striking that his father stopped painting for two years after seeing his son’s first effort, completed in just an afternoon. Later, when he was admitted as a highly gifted student at the school of applied arts in Aachen, he again stunned older artists with his mastery of his medium, even prompting one instructor to accuse him of turning in work that couldn’t have been his own. He was ultimately expelled from school at the age of 17 while he was working at—of all places—a strip club for supplying his fellow students with less than appropriate reading material, but he took it in stride. “I wasn’t overly interested in going to university. I spent most of my time in a café on Südstrasse. I liked sitting in that coffeehouse.” Seeking another way to support himself, he turned to the thing he could do best: painting.22
Wolfgang produced a variety of works for money, and also began his career as a forger, producing paintings for sale at flea markets, with some frauds among them. He traveled Europe, creating paintings in downtown areas and finding that he could make a decent income selling his works. His oeuvre at this point consisted of “the unpainted works of Old Masters at first, and later Art Nouveau and the Expressionists.”23 It was a harbinger of a career to come.
In the 1980s, Wolfgang gave the working world a try, co-owning an art gallery. Predictably, he found a day job unfulfilling and fraught with the sort of pressure to which he was unaccustomed. “I had to sit in an office, which wasn’t for me,” he said. “Suddenly I had a guy breathing down my neck who was mainly interested in making a lot of money fast.”24 So he returned to producing highly profitable forgeries, earning so much money that he soon bought an 80-foot sailboat he named Voodoo Child and hired a crew to man it. A few years later, when the money stopped flooding in due to a drop in the art market, he turned to a film project. And that’s when he met his future partner in crime, Helene.
On the first day he met her in 1992, Wolfgang told Vanity Fair, he decided that he would marry Helene and have a family with her. By the second, he had introduced her to the world of art forgery. “So you’re an art counterfeiter?” she asked. “Exactly. That’s my work. That’s my métier,” he replied.25 With the art market on the rebound, Wolfgang knew there was more money to be made. Impressed that she took the news of his vocation in stride, he asked Helene to join him in his fraud. Apparently taken by the challenge and excitement of selling fakes, the working-class girl jumped at the chance. They married in February 1993 and had a child within a year. It was around this time that Helene sold the phony Valmier to Lempertz, and a legend in illicit art was born.
Wolfgang worked hard at the art of forgery, taking great pride not only in his skill but in his historical accuracy. He went so far as to research important books on the topic of pigments, like Max Doerner’s The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting, and returned to flea markets again and again to find historical artists’ supply catalogs.26 He hunted down his materials with an eye for detail, an effort he described as more difficult than executing the actual painting. “What was really complicated was finding old canvases and frames. Sometimes they could be had for €30 and sometimes for €5,000. Some of them were really beautiful paintings, and I still have them in my head today. If I couldn’t get the old paint off, I incorporated details of the old image into the new one.”27
Wolfgang’s painting was equal parts remarkable hand skill, stunning imagination, and astonishing boldness. And while he said that the pictures could be completed in as little as two or three hours, the finished products were impressive forgeries. He fooled not only some of the most esteemed and reputable auction houses, museums, experts, and buyers in the world, but even surviving family members of the artists. Max Ernst’s expert and friend, Werner Spies, wasn’t alone in falling victim to Wolfgang; Ernst’s widow did as well. According to Helene, when Dorothea Tanning saw Wolfgang’s La Forêt (2), she called it the most beautiful picture Ernst ever painted.28 And of course, Campendonk’s son had authenticated Rotes Bild mit Pferden.
Perhaps the key to his success was his technique of researching an artist to the extent that he could stand before the canvas and, as he described it, essentially channel him. According to Wolfgang, this was not, as some have described, merely method acting. Rather, his works were the result of the forger taking brush in hand and imagining what the artist might have—but never did—paint. His dedication to becoming the artist he was “channeling” was such that he claimed, “If the artist was left-handed, then I painted with my left hand.”29 As he told Spiegel Online International, “Every philharmonic orchestra merely interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find the painter’s creative center and become familiar with it, so that I could see through his eyes how his paintings came about and, of course, see the new picture I was painting through his eyes—before I even painted it.”30 Such was the extent of this vision that Wolfgang claims he never employed underdrawings or preparatory sketches on canvases before applying paint.31
Fortunately for the art world, the ingenuity of Wolfgang Beltracchi more than met its match in the expertise of Eastaugh and, later, his colleague Jilleen Nadolny. Eastaugh’s thorough, science-based examination of Wolfgang’s works not only exposed Rotes Bild mit Pferden as a fraud, but also cast the artist in the same light as his paintings: he was not exactly what he purported to be. For instance, when they subjected his works to infrared reflectography, the pair found that Wolfgang did, in fact, use full underdrawings in a number of his works.32
By 1995 he already had the police on his heels when a number of forgeries—including a Campendonk—were linked to art dealers from Aachen and were painted by a certain Wolfgang Fischer from Krefeld. But thanks to the statute of limitations, he couldn’t be prosecuted.33 Soon thereafter, the couple and their first child, a daughter, took the fortune they had amassed, sold their Viersen, Germany, home for more than a half-million dollars, bought a motor home,
and headed for the south of France, where they purchased and renovated a lavish estate known as Domaine des Rivettes. They spent their money and entertained lavishly, enjoying the company of friends and hanging what visitors believed to be a bevy of masterpieces on the walls. All the while, the Beltracchis continued to capitalize on their fictitious collection. They sold an unknown amount—at the very least many dozens—of paintings, including Bateaux à Collioure, attributed to Fauvist Andre Derain, for $2 million. Another forged Derain, Matisse Peignant à Collioure, sold for the equivalent of more than $6 million.34 Meanwhile, a former partner of Wolfgang’s, Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus, was also enjoying successful sales of Beltracchi’s paintings, creating a provenance story similar to Helene’s: his grandfather, Johann Wilhelm Kops, had also tucked away important paintings and they were now back on the market. Life was good for the Beltracchis. That is, until Eastaugh applied his expertise to the Trasteco painting.
It is ironic that Wolfgang was undone by the forged Campendonk Rotes Bild mit Pferden, a painting in which he took great pride. Interviewed about it by Paraic O’Brien of the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 News, he said, “I love my paintings, all of them. And my best Campendonk was the Campendonk they [caught] me with. That was the Campendonk with the red horses. That was the most expensive Campendonk ever sold. Nearly 3 million Euros.” Reminded by O’Brien that it wasn’t truly a Campendonk, Wolfgang replied, “Yeah, yeah, it was not a Campendonk. It was from me, yeah, yeah, sure. It was the best one.” O’Brien, seeking to parse Wolfgang’s words, asked, “Do you mean the best one of yours?” The artist clarified: “The best Campendonk.” Taken aback, O’Brien asked, “Is that what you think? You think that your Campendonk was the best Campendonk?” Wolfgang said, “Yeah, that’s a little bit difficult. It was sold as the best Campendonk that was ever sold.” O’Brien, refusing to let Wolfgang off the hook, pushed him for a definitive answer. “But was it the best Campendonk?” To this the master forger replied, “Yeah. Sure.”35 And his claims were hard to argue, given the record price the painting garnered.
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World Page 3