Most art forgery in the Western market is not about the painting. The painting is often genuinely period — a competent 19th-century work by a forgotten artist — with a famous signature added later, a relined canvas, and a manufactured ownership history that runs through three or four "private collections" before surfacing at auction.
Signature fraud
Adding a signature to a real period painting is the single most common technique in fine-art fraud. The pigment is often correct for the period; the paint underneath is genuinely 100+ years old; the canvas is genuinely period. Only the signature is wrong — and authentication boards routinely pass these works.
Provenance laundering
A clean ownership history is more valuable than a clean canvas. Forgers and dealers manufacture provenance by:
- Inserting works into estate auctions as "from the collection of"
- Quietly placing pieces with mid-tier dealers who later resell at auction
- Forging old gallery labels and stretcher inscriptions
- Citing publications and exhibitions that never happened
A forged Sargent on a 19th-century canvas with a forged 1912 gallery label and a forged 1934 exhibition citation will pass most authentication reviews. The signature isn't the fake. The story is.
The authentication-board racket
For most major artists, attribution decisions sit with a single authentication board or estate. These bodies have their own incentives, their own conflicts, and their own histories of contested decisions. A "no" from the wrong board can render a genuine work commercially worthless; a "yes" can elevate a forgery to museum status. Several major boards have been disbanded after lawsuits.
Protect yourself
- Demand a chain of custody, not a "from the collection of"
- Independently verify exhibition and publication citations
- Use a UV light and request high-resolution back-of-canvas photographs
- For works above $25,000, commission an independent technical analysis